Theater: A dynamic, sexy Oedipus el Rey set in the LA barrio

Oedipus el Rey

Written by Luis Alfaro

Directed by Chay Yew

Starring Juan Castano, Sandra Delgado

New York Public Theater

December 3, 2017

The ancient Oedipus legend, with roots to Homer and before, was very popular among Greek playwrights, most notably Sophocles (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus) and Euripides. Later re-tellers include the Romans Julius Caesar (yes, he wrote plays) and Seneca, then Dryden and Voltaire. While the twentieth century offers Stravinsky/Cocteau’s wonderful neoclassical operatic treatment, and Freudian Oedipal dynamics were incorporated into such plays as All my Sons and Desire under the Elms, modern adaptations of the legend itself have been rarer.  This is odd, since a son’s subconscious wish to murder his father and seduce his mother was a cornerstone of twentieth century psychology. Perhaps the topic does not resonate well in our time since the Greek notions of the gods punishing hubris and Freudian concepts of our behavior being determined by our Id do not align so well with contemporary self-determinism. However, Sophocles’ concurrent theme of showing man awash in a violent and unfair universe seems very resonant with communities caught in recurrent entrapped violence, and I think it was this thread that caused Chicano playwright Luis Alfaro (1963-) to reset the legend in modern Los Angeles barrio in this stimulating 2010 version produced recently at the NY Public Theater. Alfaro is on the faculty at the University of Southern California and was the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 1997.  He has written 16 plays, most dealing with life in the barrio; several have been performed by major US companies (e.g. Oregon Shakespeare Festival), but has apparently not been seen much in New York up to now. His version of the Oedipus sticks closely to the original models while excitingly updating the setting to a modern Los Angeles barrio.

Oedipus el Rey is played on a spare set mostly marked by movable grates and bars, reflecting both its prison settings and the sense that the characters are trapped by fate (or perhaps by the rigid codes of honor and traditions of barrio culture). Dominating all is a full stage-width, wonderfully painted Orosco-style street mural in vivid LA colors, dominated by a Virgin Mary presiding over a Last Judgement, flanked by a wedding couple—this backdrop nicely summarizes the themes of the play.

The Greek Chorus is played by young Latino men, often dressed in orange prison garb, and speaking in a hop-hop styled update of the measured poetry of Sophocles. Despite its modernization, the plot hews remarkably closely to the traditional Greek models, including the names of the characters (e.g. Tiresias Gomez). We meet Oedipus (the chiseled Juan Castano) in prison, trapped in chronic incarceration for a series of minor crimes. 

He says that he has been abandoned by poor LA teenage parents at birth. He walks with a slight limp (Oedipus means “swollen foot”), the result of an earlier knife slashing. (Digressive footnote: the Greeks may have gotten his name wrong. Earlier versions of the legend called him Oedipais (“child of the swollen sea”), since in those versions his parents had abandoned him on a chest floating in the ocean, not on Mt. Cithaeron as per Sophocles). On discharge from prison, this Oedipus heads to the Chicano mecca of Los Angeles, despite warnings from his “father” and mentor Tiresias that this will derail his objective to go clean and lead a legitimate life. Driving there, he gets in a very-LA road rage dispute and accidentally kills an older man, who turns out to be Creon, a barrio gang leader and, as he will later learn, his real father. Sophocles’ play is unclear on why Oedipus kills Creon at the three roads, but this version cleverly echoes Euripides’ version, in which a right of way dispute among chariots leads to the death. Once in LA Oedipus tries unsuccessfully to get a legitimate job, but is turned down by the Wendys and K-marts of the world because of his prison record and tattooed appearance. So he returns to street life, falling in with the dead Creon’s old barrio gang, attracted by Creon’s grieving wife Jocasta (a voluptuous and mercurial Sandra Delgado). Sophocles tells us little about how this unknowingly incestuous relationship started, but Alfaro chooses to make the relationship of Oedipus and Jocasta the 20-25 minute dramatic center of the 100 minute play.  He asks  the actors to take big risks—after first circling one another like wary animals, they later sit, converse, and make uninhibited love completely nude, just a couple feet away from the first row of the small playhouse. This difficult scene is played beautifully, convincingly, and erotically. As Oedipus Juan Castano here displays his innocence and vulnerability, superimposed on smoldering tension. The rest of the play follows Sophocles closely, including the use of omens (local botanica healers and herbalists, revered in the barrio), a sphinx (here a marvelous costumed Cinco de Mayo dragon), and the tragic denouement (Jocasta stabs herself with a shiv, Oedipus is blinded, then returns to prison, now a vulnerable victim of abuse). Alfaro does a wonderful job of communicating the timelessness and allegory of the Greek original, fused to a simultaneously energetic, festive, sexy, and spiritual drama representative of LA gang culture.

Oedipus el Rey is a truly impressive and successful adaptation of a classic play. Alfaro respects the original and the nuances of LA street culture equally, and is at home with both. He deftly replaces the Greek gods with the entrapping gang culture of LA in showing how a man’s options can be limited by outside forces. Combined with the taut, energetic and well-choreographed direction of Chay Yew, this was a challenging, memorable afternoon in the theater.