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This is, after all, the great play, the key
text in all drama. It passes through time like a knife and strikes to the heart
of every generation. It tells us how narrow the line can be between normality
and utter abnormality, of how small a moment it takes to cross it, of how an
act of pity may become the instrument of horrible destiny. Sophocles incises
our every hidden horror, fear and guilt because he makes his people only too
human.
Oedipus, the baby prince shackled and given to
a shepherd to destroy because of fear of a prophecy that he would kill his
father, is saved through the shepherd's mercy. He grows up thinking that he is
the son of another, far-off king. One day in manhood, travelling on a lonely
road, he meets a small party of men. Their herald speaks rudely to him, an
older man in the chariot hits him with a whip. Oedipus fights back, kills them
all, comes to the city, saves its people from a plague, marries its
queen.
Years pass, plagues return. Determined to
establish why, Oedipus gradually uncovers the truth. He, father-killer,
mother-marrier, is the root of the corruption. His wife kills herself. He
blinds himself and goes into exile, to carry the burden of his sin and to
expiate it.
We see none of this. It is all reported,
recollected, pieced together in our presence. We are held inside the
past-present tension, unless that tension is destroyed in the production. A
performance that gives the words their exact weight, neither more nor less than
is appropriate to the message, probably only exists in the mind. But this is a
play that must be performed, if only to measure the distance between
interpretations.
Hall used masks for the stage. The effect then,
as I recall it, was to distance the players and to change their voices. Did
they wear the masks for radio? Or were the heightened tones and thrumming
consonants - brinnng, mmmonstrous - just there from habit? Between these
clanging emphases and waiting for the next rhyme to drop ("They have brought
him here / Tiresias, that great, godlike seer"), not to mention the occasional
sheer drop into total bathos ("O, it is truly terrible to be wise...."), you
might think I had a rotten time listening to this.
I didn't. I was gripped, wrung, shattered. It
may not have been perfection but it was, unarguably, magnificent in aim and
achievement. It will be repeated (and followed by Oedipus at Colonus) on
Sunday night on Radio 3. |
