Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Maybe it\u2019s coincidence. Or maybe there\u2019s something in the air that has drawn theatre directors recently to an ancient tragedy about hubris in powerful leaders. Either way, here we are with the second major London production of Sophocles\u2019 Oedipus within months \u2014 this time it\u2019s Rami Malek and Indira Varma spiralling into the vortex.\u00a0Again it\u2019s a collision of ancient and modern, again it raises huge questions about knowledge, truth and power, how much we want to know and why. But where Robert Icke\u2019s recent staging at Wyndham\u2019s Theatre measured up to the implacable horror of Oedipus\u2019s fate by sucking it into a familiar political world of spin-doctors and screens, Matthew Warchus\u2019s production, co-directed with choreographer Hofesh Shechter and infused with a strong sense of ritual, goes the other way. Humans here feel tiny \u2014 pinned against the vastness of time and fate. There\u2019s an elemental grandeur to the staging, but, while it\u2019s spectacular, what it loses somewhere is the human pathos of the tragedy.We\u2019re in a bone-dry, near-future world where water is scarce, the people are desperate and reasoned response is giving way to religious hardliners, led by Oedipus\u2019s power-hungry brother-in-law Creon (Nicholas Khan). Malek\u2019s King Oedipus, a slight, awkward figure suddenly feeling his outsider status, offers to consult the oracle to quell disorder. He\u2019s delighted when it comes up with a solution \u2014 find the former king\u2019s killer and the rains will come. Soon he\u2019s scrabbling through old box-files of evidence and there\u2019s no saving him from the truths he will uncover.\u00a0The production looks sensational, the cavernous depths of the Old Vic stage sculpted by Rae Smith\u2019s sliding screens and Tom Visser\u2019s stark lighting, which silhouettes the royal family against throbbing, merciless sunbursts or in icy, dark interiors. Shechter\u2019s brilliant chorus of dancers swirl across the space like dust clouds, writhe across the back of the stage in a seething mass, or suddenly surge to the front and loom over the audience: a desperate, parched crew who evoke distressed peoples across the ages. Our own responses to climate change, and the menace of populist leaders and shifty advisers, hang over the whole show.\u00a0And yet there\u2019s something here that doesn\u2019t click. The dance segments mean the story is splintered, delivered in clipped, disjointed sections, and we lose the urgency and skin-prickling dread that should accompany Oedipus\u2019s journey. Ella Hickson\u2019s script crunches the poetic together with the vernacular and makes Jocasta \u2014 a fine, impassioned performance from Varma \u2014 a voice of reason, urging her stubborn husband to lead his people to safety. Cecilia Noble\u2019s formidable seer, Tiresias, complains of being dragged from her cup of tea to prophesy.\u00a0Even so, the characters seem weirdly remote and disconnected: Malek\u2019s angular, expressionless Oedipus feels like a man uneasy in his own skin, which makes sense, but he finds no change of tone as the devastating truths of his existence hit the light. It\u2019s hard to feel anything for him, or even to believe in a real connection between the couple, and without that we lose much of the tragedy.\u00a0Perhaps that detachment is intentional. The dancers end up sitting on the ground, gazing into the distance as if waiting for the next tough-talking leader to turn up and strut about grandly. But for all its stark physicality, this telling of the tale doesn\u2019t reach into your core and rattle you with its painful, nagging questions about fate and human agency.\u00a0\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606To March 29, oldvictheatre.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Maybe it\u2019s coincidence. Or maybe there\u2019s something in the air that has drawn theatre directors recently to an ancient tragedy about hubris in powerful leaders. Either<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-194395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194397,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194395\/revisions\/194397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}