"No man is feliz till he's six feet under": Oedipus El Rey

Blind, a modern-day adaptation of Oedipus Rex by Craig Wright, just opened in New York to bad reviews. But, perversely, I almost wish that I could see it for myself... because I recently saw another new adaptation of the Oedipus legend--Oedipus El Rey, by Luis Alfaro--and it was really amazing. So I'd be curious to see this other play to learn why Wright gets it wrong (ha!) and Alfaro gets it right.

It sounds like Wright's play, like Sophocles' original, focuses on the ninety minutes it takes King Oedipus to discover that he has killed his father and married his mother--a single scene, played out in real-time. But Alfaro's play dramatizes the backstory: he shows the young Jocasta giving birth to Oedipus, and how exactly Oedipus killed Laius and fell in love with Jocasta. It is vivid, it is fluid, and it covers a broad emotional palette. In ninety minutes, there's a tender love scene accompanied by a haunting a capella rendition of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," a rousing party celebrating Oedipus and Jocasta's wedding, a dream sequence where Oedipus converses with prophetic owls, and a truly shocking and gruesome ending. There were only six actors--Oedipus, Jocasta, and a four-man chorus who take on other roles as needed--and minimal scenery, enabling the play to cover so much ground so swiftly.

Sophocles' play is a detective story with a cathartic punch at the end, but the detective-story parts of the plot are glossed over in Alfaro's version. It's much more of a human drama, all the way through. He streamlines the original myth: Oedipus learns the truth shortly after marrying Jocasta, rather than after they have four children together. Also, in his version, Oedipus's foster-father is Tirésias, the blind prophet, not some random king of a neighboring city--which is such an amazing way to reinforce the theme of blindness that runs through the play, and makes Oedipus' decision to gouge his eyes out that much more resonant.

The Los Angeles Chicano setting of Alfaro's adaptation also lends it interest--I particularly liked the Chorus's translation of Sophocles into a contemporary Hispanic idiom, especially the final moral: "No man is feliz 'til he's six feet under." But I came out of Oedipus El Rey thinking less about how it was a "Hispanic play," and more about how it rewrote a familiar myth in a compelling and moving way, with a great storytelling instinct.

Oh, one more thing: I loved how Alfaro made the Greek concept of "hubris" intelligible to contemporary audiences by writing Oedipus as a very young, very cocky man. So not only the will of the gods, but Oedipus' youthful arrogance is to blame for what happens--he's sure that Laius deserved to die and that Jocasta will go to bed with him. And Joshua Torrez, who according to his playbill bio is only just out of college, did a great job in the role.

Oedipus El Rey has been a critical and commercial hit for the Magic Theatre and has been extended to March 14.

Seneca = The Roman Tarantino

After Medea vs. Medea a few weeks ago, I was chatting with one of the actors. Like me, he definitely preferred Euripides' version to Seneca's.

I said, "I got the feeling that Seneca was less concerned with moving the action forward, and more with writing speeches that made allusions to all of these other myths, so that he could show off how smart he was."

"Yeah, he was basically the Quentin Tarantino of Ancient Rome," said my friend. "Sorry, I don't like Tarantino."

"Oh, I don't know, I really enjoyed Inglourious Basterds," I said. My friend hadn't seen it, but maybe he should check it out. It seems that what he objects to is Tarantino's random riffs about pop-culture oddities, but Tarantino naturally had to tone that down for Basterds, because it takes place in the '40s. (And I thought that the riff on King Kong was brilliant!)

But anyway, my friend's comparison of Seneca and Tarantino was especially apt because not only are they both known for elaborate, rhetorical, allusion-filled dialogue... they are also really fond of outrageous bloody violence. In Euripides' play (as is typical of Greek tragedy) Medea kills her children offstage, but in Seneca's, she does it right in front of the audience. Seneca, not the Greek playwrights, was the inspiration for Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy. And after Cutting Ball's staged reading of the Jacobean revenge tragedy Women Beware Women, in the finale of which nearly every character dies in a bizarrely violent way, the post-show discussion compared it to...Quentin Tarantino! It's like there's a direct through-line from the ancient Roman dramatist to the Italian-American auteur.

I always used to have trouble remembering why I should care about Seneca or what his stylistic hallmarks were, but now that I know to think of him as "the Roman Tarantino," I won't forget!