Oedipus Rex

By Sophocles

Subjects:

Description: The 1957 production preserved on this DVD was directed by famed British director-actor Sir Tyrone Guthrie for his Shakespearean Festival Players of Stratford, Ontario. Stripped down to 88 minutes and filmed in a tiny studio without frills or a live audience, this script translation by Irish mystic poet William Butler Yeats hews close to the original text: King Oedipus (Douglas Campbell, whose voice is a superb vocal orchestra) is on a mission to locate the murderer of his father. Of course he's doomed to discover that the blind sooth-seer Tiresias (Donald Davis) is correct when he announces that not only is Oedipus himself the guilty party, but that Oedipus' wife Jocasta (Eleanor Stuart) is actually his own mother. Guthrie recreated Greek conventions by having all his actors wear elaborate masks, just as they would have in the immense Theater of Dionysus at the foot of the Acropolis, where the play was originally performed for audiences that numbered in the tens of thousands. Guthrie interpreted Oedipus Rex as a dramatization of the annual scapegoat-sacrifice of the king, the basis (some scholars think) of much Greek religion. This production was therefore designed, with its precise, deliberate movements and carefully posed tableaux, to recreate an ancient solemn ritual just as the ancients had experienced it. Although rooted in religious observances, it's a mistake to think of Oedipus Rex as dry and narrowly sermonic as a Southern Baptist passion play. Oedipus is a vigorous, active king. His main flaw, besides his ignorance, is his speed and energy. While formally stylized to within an inch of its life, Guthrie's vision kept his actors on the move, and there are scenes of real power here, such as Tiresias' pronouncement of Oedipus' guilt. The masks and costumes are emotive and rather creepy, as if we're watching chess pieces or life-size puppets enacting the whims of the gods. The actors' oratory style is formal and stentorian to the point of otherworldly. In its infancy, drama wasn't about reality -- it was about poetry and fantasy and ritual, all of which are on ample display. To look for modern realism in Greek drama is to miss the point. - Mark Bourne at dvdjournal.com