Truth Is a Mother: Here's What You Actually Need to Know About Oedipus on Broadway

There’s a solid chance that the last time you had to think deeply about Oedipus Rex, you were sitting in 11th grade English class and trying to understand the symbolism behind the titular character’s ankles. Hope you’re still sitting down: The new Oedipus at Broadway's Studio 54 is a contemporary and bold retelling of Sophocles’ ancient Greek tragedy. Created, directed and adapted by Robert Icke, the play revolves around the drama inside a campaign headquarters on election night. Oedipus (the Tony-nominated Mark Strong) is an outsider on the verge of a historic victory with his wife, Jocasta (Lesley Manville, making her Broadway debut), staunchly standing by his side. Then—2,400-year-old spoiler alert!—Oedipus learns a devastating secret about his relationship to his parents that threatens to destroy his life.

As it turns out, this Oedipus has a rich and fascinating history of its own. Here’s a quick study guide to a production so revered during its recent two-month run on London’s West End (also starring Strong and Manville) that it won a 2025 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival of a Play. Don’t worry, there won’t be a test.

The Icke Factor
Icke, a native Brit, has blazed his theatrical trail by modernizing classic texts. He first earned raves in 2015 for reworking the Aeschylus play Oresteia to give it a sense of urgency. (It played off-Broadway in 2022). He’s also renovated the likes of Anton Chekhov (Uncle Vanya), William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Player Kings), Henrick Ibsen (The Wild Duck) and Friedrich Schiller (Mary Stuart). On Broadway, his bold staging of George Orwell’s 1984 starring Olivia Wilde, Reed Birney and Tom Sturridge in 2017 caused audiences to faint and vomit due to the intense strobe light special effects, jackhammer sounds and the extreme torture scenes. “If this show is the most upsetting part of anyone’s day, they’re not reading the news headlines,” Icke, who co-wrote and co-directed the production, told The Hollywood Reporter. “Things are much worse than a piece of theater getting under your skin a little bit.”

Oedipus Origin Story
The idea to stage Oedipus in a campaign office came to Icke after the 2016 presidential election. As Icke tells it, he was fixated on what Hillary Clinton was doing in her hotel suite during the agonizing night she lost to Donald Trump. “I remember thinking, ‘God that’d be an extraordinary film or play or something that explores what fights are being had right now and what she should do about that result,” he told Vogue. As for tying the plot to the doomed Greek hero, Icke explained to The Guardian that he was intrigued by the political parallels. “Oedipus is a guy with a vision—he’s the guy you want,” he said. “If he’s the best person for the job, do you care who they go to bed with? Does it matter what he does in his personal life? Is it of any relevance? We assume now that it does matter in a very primary way, but I wanted to interrogate that.”

First Reactions
Oedipus made its world debut in April 2018 in Amsterdam, where it was performed in Dutch. A year later, it was staged (with English subtitles) at the Edinburgh festival with Hans Keating and Marieke Heebink. The early buzz? Though Icke retained all of the original names from Sophocles’ epic play, this was not your mother’s (or grandmother’s or great-grandmother’s) Oedipus. For starters, the lusty Oedipus and Jocasta go at it on the conference room floor—only to be interrupted by their daughter, Antigone. The show also featured campaign T-shirts, pizza boxes and snappy spin talk with no traces of a Greek chorus. The nail-biting tension, meanwhile, built up right through the agonizing last moments. “It has a thriller element,” Heebink told The Guardian. “You know what’s going to happen but still you are hoping it won’t. Even in the moment I am playing it, I think ‘No! No!’”

A Covid Shakeup
In 2019, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that Mark Strong and Helen Mirren—who worked together in The Red Barn at the National Theatre four years earlier—were set to star together in Oedipus’ English-language debut on the West End. “She’s a really attractive, very lively, vivacious older lady,” Icke said of the legendary Oscar-winning actress. But the production was postponed in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic and then delayed until 2024. Mirren became unavailable due to scheduling conflicts, and Manville (who portrayed Princess Margaret in The Crown) stepped in as Jocasta. FYI: Strong and Manville both appeared in the 2023 film The Critic but didn’t share any scenes.

Casting the Leads
Icke told Vogue that he wanted the actor playing Oedipus to seem steady, principled and devoted to his family. Enter Strong, best known for playing big-screen villains (The Penguin, Shazam!, Cruella, Kick-Ass) and spies (Kingsman, Body of Lies, The Imitation Game, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). He also was nominated for a Tony in 2016 for playing Eddie on A View from the Bridge. “He feels like he could solve your problems for you,” Icke said, adding that he was impressed by Strong’s “integrity and his articulate calm.” As for Manville, Icke explained to Vogue that he was particularly fond of her Oscar-nominated performance in the 2017 film Phantom Thread and liked that she "feels like a mum." (She is, by the way. Her son, Alfie, is 36 and a camera operator.)

London Calling
The West End production of Oedipus starring Strong and Manville opened on October 4, 2024. And though the source material dates back to around 429 BCE, audiences on opening night were still left agape by the twist that the heroic Oedipus killed his father and slept with his mother. “I heard gasping, I heard laughter, and I could hear a pin drop,” Strong, who’d go on to win a Best Actor Olivier Award for his performance, told The Associated Press. “We had a little of everything, which is perfect.” Manville posited a theory to the AP about the reaction: “We’re dealing with a love story, really—the most tragic of love stories,” she said. “Because these two people are great together.”

Lessons in Chemistry
During their London run, Strong and Manville explained their dynamic to Vogue. Strong had never before worked with Manville, and when they first met, “I was conscious that I didn’t want to appear anything other than reliable and professional and somebody that she could count on,” he said. Their method of working: Major drama on the stage, utmost professionalism off it. The two “don’t get lost in the mysticism of being an actor,” he said. “When you’re standing this side in the wings, you are literally saying ‘I’ll have a cup of tea. I’ll see you in a moment.’ And then that side of the wings, you are on.” Manville added that they chose not to have an intimacy coordinator for that racy sex scene, which has stayed intact throughout every production. "Mark and I have both done things like this before,” she said, “and so we just felt, we can sort this out.”

Oedipus Forever
This actually isn’t the first time a contemporary iteration of Oedipus has been staged on Broadway. Oedipus El Rey—set in a Chicano gang environment in South Central Los Angeles and starring Juan Castano and Sandra Delgado—played for six weeks in 2017. The Gospel at Colonus, a musical adaptation of Oedipus at Colonus set at a black Pentecostal church service, ran briefly on Broadway in 1988. Londoners received another fresh take earlier this year when Ella Hickson’s new dance-theater remake of Oedipus opened at the Old Vic. Rami Malek played Oedipus; Indira Varma played Jocasta.

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