Many modern interpretations of Greek tragedy tend to struggle with the distinction between the predictable and the inevitable.
The former drains a production of what essentially compels us to keep watching - a sense of fresh possibility - with a dull and painful trudge to the finish line; conversely, the latter prompts an increasing sense of dread and horror that tragedy is unavoidable, burrowing below the skin of what we already know will happen and sinking its teeth into the emotional fibre of our being.
The question remains: how do you retell something that has been told, over and over again, for nearly 2,500 years, without the curse of predictability hovering low overhead? The tale of Oedipus the King is one such tragedy, the bearer of a story so familiar that it is difficult to imagine how one might be able to raise it back to the heights it achieved in Ancient Greece as first penned by Sophocles in 429 B.C.
But this brutal and beautiful South Korean musical adaptation manages to do just that, dealing the play a literal sort of poetic justice with its emphasis on song and verse.
The story is the same. The young king Oedipus, intelligent and idealistic, has spent his life trying to escape an oracle's horrific warning: that he will kill his father and bed his mother. But in his desperation to avoid this fate, he propels himself straight into its arms.
Director Jae-Hyung Seo has homed in on the narrative device of the Greek chorus, elevating the group to share star billing with their protagonist. In lesser productions, the chorus can be an unwieldy, static appendage, but here it is a sinewy and muscled creature, every member moving as part of a collective whole with balletic rigour thanks to some sharp choreography by Eun-Jung Jang.
Together, the chameleonic chorus channels Oedipus' wracked soul, a murder of crows, an abandoned baby crying in the woods, a sinister wind rippling through the room, and everything in-between. They begin with a tightly-wound precision, but as Oedipus' inner world begins to unravel, so do the people around him; the chorus spins about the stage in a maelstrom of doubt and despair, and Oedipus is in the eye of the storm.
Seo places the audience right on the Victoria Theatre stage - so close you can smell the sweat of a dozen bodies moving in unison. He also reveals three pianists playing four pianos live, lending the play a tempestuous urgency with their rising and falling octaves and haunting chromatic scales in a magisterial score by composer Uzong Choe. This production, so rich in metaphor and imagery, also layers on a gorgeous choral landscape with the cast's layered harmonies, all beautifully sung.
Together, the audience members and the musicians encircle the main characters in the centre of the room, and Oedipus is confined to a circular wooden platform on the stage, unable to shake off the ticking clock of his own fate.
While we know both the cause and course of Oedipus' destiny, actor Hae Soo Park embodies his anguish and his disgust at himself so wholly that we are compelled to feel deeply for him. Is he a puppet of the gods for their cruel sport, or did his own actions, taken of his own volition, lead him to his doom? Despite my knowledge of the play, my heart ached as Oedipus shuddered at himself, retching as he evaluated the misdeeds his various body parts had committed, as if at odds with the very body that housed his soul.
It is the journey, rather than the visible end, that becomes the fulcrum of this production - Oedipus becomes extraordinarily sympathetic even as he seems to tempt the gods with his insatiable curiosity and his profound need to dredge up the terrible secrets of his past.
With all the guts and bloodshed of modern stage and screen, it is easy to be desensitised to the concept of violence, and how viscerally it affects a human being. This performance presents us a trembling Oedipus at his core, stripped of special effects, yet remarkably affecting - intimate in scale but so epic in scope.
Follow Corrie Tan on Twitter @CorrieTan
book it
THE CHORUS; OEDIPUS
Where: Victoria Theatre
When: Aug 22 and Aug 23, 8pm
Admission: Very limited tickets at $45 from Sistic (call 6348-5555 or go to www.sistic.com.sg)
Info: Go to sifa.sg
