Oedipussy – Royal & Derngate Theatre, Northampton
Director & Adaptor: Emma Rice
Writers: Carl Grose & the company
Music: Toby Park & Neil Filby
Reviewer: Sue Dixon
The Public Reviews Rating: 
Most people have an idea of the key themes from the quintessential Greek tragedy Oedipus. He is well known as the mythical king of Thebes who lives out the prophecy that he will kill his own father and marry his mother, thereby bringing disaster on his family and city. Made even more popular by Freud who adopted his complex from it, you might think it would be difficult to find a great deal of humour in all this.
Well, how wrong can you be? Spy Monkey and director Emma Rice do just that in this wonderful collaboration with Kneehigh, in association with Royal & Derngate. It is another quality production, building on the successful Made in Northampton season from last year, which will go on tour following this debut run at The Royal.
The cast is a harmonious team of four, all of whom bring their own very different but special qualities to the performance. None shine above another, all equally filling the stage with very funny physical and verbal interplay. Aitor Basauri and Petra Massey have the capacity to make everyone laugh just being on the stage; that innate quality that some comic actors just have. Toby Park and Stephan Kreiss aren’t less funny. They just operate in a slightly more understated, dry humour sort of way. Together they weave the most delicious naughtiness that has the audience literally rocking with laughter.
The set is a white series of rectangular colonnades with ladders and high platforms which are used constantly throughout the play. Very cleverly, this set delivers props and characters in such wittily choreographed ways. The props and costumes too are designed to add massively to the humour and are used to milk every last bit of comedy by all the actors. It all comes together in what can only be described as chaotic control.
Props and costumes speak as comic metaphors for the character or the plot line at the time. Fake blood depicted as red ribbons and plastic outlines on the floor, The Oracle with huge balloon ‘eye balls’. Everything is so outlandish and delivered with such sardonic clumsiness it becomes instantly funny.
The whole performance has some of the camp drama of James Bond, the diversity of the music giving it the feel of a weird Gilbert & Sullivan operetta (in a good way) and elements which provided echoes of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
It is an eclectic, cheeky, audacious and very funny performance from start to finish. Most of the audience were laughing loud and long for the entire show and all ended with well deserved rapturous applause. If you like the slightly anarchic and very funny physical theatre then this is a fabulous night out.
Runs until Saturday 18 February 2012
Picture: Alexis Chabala
Tags: Aitor Basauri, Carl Grose, Emma Rice, Kneehigh, Lucy Bradbridge, Made In Northampton, Michael Vale, Neil Filby, Northampton, Oedipussy, Petra Massey, Royal & Derngate, Simon Baker, Spy Monkey, Stephan Kreiss, Toby Park
