‘We are the new gods,” Oedipus, King of Thebes, declares in a moment of hubris. In a double-bill inspired by the cycle of myths about the cursed Oedipus (Frank Blake), his wife, Jocasta (Eileen Walsh), and their children, Marina Carr expands on her earlier reckonings with Greek tragedy.
Drawing here on the Theban plays of Sophocles and Euripides, Carr gives her characters freedom to expand beyond those sources, testing the limits of received ideas about morality, punishment and above all, the existence of powers – god or gods – beyond this world.
Lavishly produced with a cast of 16, the majestic scale of the staging by director Caitríona McLaughlin and set designer Cordelia Chisholm does justice to Carr’s ambition. Shimmering silver curtains reveal a raised stone slab and a suspended ceiling, demarcating the palace of Thebes and the gods’ realm, with mirrored projections creating a dual perspective. Rippling lighting (Jane Cox) and video design (Dick Straker), ethereal vocals and thrumming depth-charges of music and sound (Carl Kennedy) add ominous tones.
Expansive … The Boy at the Abbey, Dublin. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh
Jocasta is the protagonist here, alternately wittily acerbic and anguished in Walsh’s magnetic performance. The queen who gives away her baby son, Oedipus, only to marry him years later is portrayed as a woman who rails against anyone who tries to control her, whether gods, “the shower above”, or men. The central drama of The Boy focuses on the shocked realisation by Jocasta and Oedipus that in trying to thwart the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus has fulfilled it.
“You are my husband,” Jocasta says, in a riveting scene, raw in its sexual and emotional charge, as they try to understand how much they had already guessed about each other. In the second play, The God and His Daughter, Jocasta follows the now blind Oedipus into exile at Colonos, the tension between them curdling into mutual accusation and recrimination, closer to marital bickering than the obsessive passion that went before.
Tense … Zara Devlin and Frank Blake in The God and His Daughter. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh
With the dramatic momentum stalling, part two offers a commentary on the action and its violent aftermath in Thebes, with snatches of other Greek myths narrated, unpicked and questioned. While underlining Carr’s point that there is no definitive version of a myth, with every retelling a creative act in itself, there is a sense of treading water. In the next generation, even the much-dramatised confrontation between the couple’s daughter, Antigone, and her uncle, Creon, seems sketchy, with Antigone (Éilish McLaughlin) motivated by her ambition to be queen rather than considerations of divine rites and conscience.
While The Shee (Olwen Fouéré), a steely messenger from the gods, warns this cursed family they will not escape their fate, her fellow immortals seem far less interested in “the clodhoppers”. Played with delicious comedy by Catherine Walsh, Amy Conroy and Jolly Abraham in absurd puffed-up costumes, these gods are portrayed as decadent, pampered creatures, having difficulty keeping track of events on earth. With Carr’s ironic humour making a welcome return, they slyly remind us that figures of fun can wield frightening amounts of power – even if nobody believes in them.
At the Abbey, Dublin, until 1 November. Dublin theatre festival continues until 12 October.
