“How terrible to see the truth,” says Tiresias. Indeed. But how much more terrible to refuse to see it. In Wayne Jordan’s Thebes, everyone is turning a blind eye to the obvious. Jordan’s new version of the tragedy, about the king who runs but cannot hide from his fate and the prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his own mother, may not smash and remake Sophocles with the same inventive vigour of some recent UK productions of the Greeks, but it has a cool clarity and an unshowy formal grace. It rumbles like ominous distant thunder rather than making you feel the full storm.
In Ciaran O’Melia’s design, Thebes is no grand state standing on pomp but a frightened village full of people unsettled and terrified by the misfortunes that have befallen them, eager to find somebody to blame. They gather like an uncertain community choir turning up for practice in the village hall to sit on wooden school chairs and hear what their admired leader, Oedipus, will do to save them. Tom Lane’s score, with its hints of Tallis and more, underpins the evening beautifully, voices coming together and separating as society falls apart.
If this year’s Dublin theatre festival has a theme, it may well be the responsibilities of both the individual and the community, and it’s to the fore here. The chorus want to be saved by someone, anyone but themselves; Oedipus is a man who has refused to examine who he really is; his brother-in-law, Creon, enjoys the benefits of royalty without the obligations, and Jocasta increasingly insists that “there is no such thing as prophecy”, even as the truth stares back at her. There is no letting the audience off the hook either: the lights at the back of the stage, initially a bank of unseeing square eyes, gradually begin to glow. At first, they are dull and orange and then white and dazzling like a blinding searchlight turned upon us.
Everyone behaves badly. Oedipus and Creon end up in fisticuffs and most terrifyingly of all, as Oedipus realises that he is the punchline of a terrible cosmic joke, the community protects itself by turning inward and refusing to even hold out a helping hand to the bloodied fallen king. Barry John O’Connor is quietly moving as the flawed Oedipus. Peter Gowen’s Tiresias, more sorrowful grandad than mystic seer, is very refreshing, and Fiona Bell picks up on the textual hints that Jocasta knows more than she’s letting on.
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Abbey theatre, Dublin, until 31 October. Box office: +353 (0)1878 7222.
