Great Performances Reviews

A filmed performance of Julie Taymor’s variation of the Igor Stravinksy opera, Oedipus Rex originally aired as part of PBS’ Great Performances series. If you’re still with me after that introductory sentence, I suggest you seek this out for its artistic daring and soaring theatricality. Some of the things that mar Taymor’s film work soar when taken into the context of a proscenium arch and a live audience just outside the frame.

Of course, something as expansive and gigantic as an opera was built for Taymor’s artistic cross-pollination and cultural borrowings. A tale of ancient Greece done for a Japanese festival with a heavy dose of Noh Theater and exoskeletal puppets and sung in Latin, it sounds like a collision of someone’s artistic obsessions and it very much plays as this. I doubt you’ve ever seen a version of Oedipus Rex as deeply strange. The clockwork like infant puppet of Oedipus that opens the show is a harbinger of the hallucinatory aspects to come.

If there’s any knock I can give against Oedipus Rex it’s simply that the camera placement occasionally undermines the drama as it unfolds. With so much spectacle going on the detours away from the full view of the stage hamper the impact. Of course, a few of these moments actually work beautifully like a close-up of Philip Langridge that dims the lights across his face before focusing in on his eyes. Too often though, the camera zooms in on a performer’s face while the business of the dancers and moving parts of the stage are ignored. Taken as a whole, this version of Oedipus Rex is a haunting, beautiful, strange experience and well worth the journey.