6th Year Classics students see ‘Oedipus the King’ in the Abbey

With a brilliant preformance of King Lear fresh in my mind just from that morning, I went to the Abbey Theatre with the other Classics students to watch Oedipus the King. The stage was arranged strangely; a single table surrounded by dozens of chairs and I was beginning to worry that the director was going to take some strange twist on the play. Maybe it was really artsy. Or modern. Or maybe the chorus would spontaneously break into a song and dance number through the middle of it all.

I didn't have any reason to worry, though. Only a few minutes in, and I could tell that this was something I would enjoy. The production was refreshingly interesting and new but somehow still stuck to the text with loyalty. It was really an experience to see, acted out infront of you, the same play you had been studying for months. Suddenly, it becomes something more. The characters are brought to life before you. Their world and their perdicament becomes more real to you. Their words are the same but now you can sense the emotion behind them.

It's not really a surprise that I enjoyed it. The production succeeded in fueling my interest in Oedipus more than before. On the ride home, I found myself thinking that that evening we weren't any different to the Ancient Greeks that watched Oedipus before us. All of us cringing at Oedipus' ironic words, intrigued by the mystery of his birth, wincing at the reality of his fate, and all of that while we are seperated by more than two thousand years from each other.

Svetlana Cvetic (6th Year)