Tighe) reveals the truth of Oedipus’ birth. But suddenly the play will swing back to its resonant origins, as when a white-masked messenger (Mr. And you may roll your eyes as the characters flatly utter banalities about inappropriate closeness within the family. This is of a piece with the sort of standard-issue, detached parody you might expect from a company that considers itself postmodern and post-theater. With a largely affectless acting style that recalls the Dogme school of film (Pan Pan previously adapted Lars von Trier’s “Idiots” to the stage), the cast members play various truth-seeking games that lead nowhere, while a series of Freudian flashcards, marked with words like “Id” and “Oedipus complex,” are projected onto television monitors above them. Dennehy is seen earlier as a naked Sphinx, singing a raw-voiced version of the chorus of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” So Oedipus (Bush Moukarzel), Jocasta (Gina Moxley), Uncle Creon (Dylan Tighe) and little Antigone (Aoife Duffin) reluctantly enlist the aid of that famous family therapist and all-seeing blind man Tiresias (Ned Dennehy). The early scenes of this 70-minute play find the Oedipus family experiencing various forms of malaise, which are not just a symptom of the plague that’s ravaged their land, and deciding to get help. The script is woven from versions of the Oedipal myth, according to Sophocles, Seneca and, as important, Sigmund Freud, not to mention their many literal-minded interpreters. Unexpected rewards come to those who wait.įor this version of a classic myth not only retells the story in latter-day drag but also considers the tenacity of the hold of that story on the Western imagination. Don’t make the mistake of bolting after the first scene, as one man did on the night I saw the show. Quinn, “Oedipus Loves You,” which transplants the Theban king and his ill-fated loved ones to contemporary suburbia, is loud and obvious in its presentation and surprisingly subtle in its cumulative effect. This 16-year-old troupe, which is performing the piece through June 1 at Performance Space 122, has toured the world with works that include a Mandarin version of Synge’s “Playboy of the Western World.” This company sounds so seriously arty that your instinct on hearing about it is to run straight into the arms of “Iron Man.”įortunately, like most real artists, Pan Pan is better at doing than at teaching. But there’s more than gross-out facetiousness at work in “Oedipus Loves You,” Gavin Quinn and Simon Doyle’s rough and sneakingly smart gloss on mythology’s favorite mama’s boy, by the experimental Irish theater company Pan Pan. But, you know, they sound pretty good, especially considering that the lead vocalist has just gouged out his eyes, and the chief backup singer, who wears a noose around her neck, is dead.Ĭute, huh? It’s the kind of scenario some punchy, overcaffeinated college students might come up with while cramming for classics finals. It’s part of a family therapy project, which they sorely need, and nobody’s quite in control. The members of the doomed house of Oedipus have thrown together their own garage band.
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