new beast theatre works

Oedipus Rex Play tears into the pages Sophocles and glues the surviving scraps into a highly theatrical, musically modern, drastically graffitied adaptation.  The line between performance and reality fades as the action jumps from imagined city streets to backstage dressing rooms, and as Oedipus grows more concerned with proving himself a regal hero than finding his light and remembering his lines. Prodded on by a scrappy ensemble of characters and a playfully skeptical backing band, this Oedipus is overwhelmed by his character's ambitions.  But by the time the performer finally glimpses his tragic mistakes, he finds he is as tied to his dialogue and blocking as Oedipus is to his prophesied, disastrous fate.

Oedipus Rex Play

Vintage Theater Collective's website calls this chaotic, childlike show "stupid." On one level, that's true. Adapters David Amaral and Max Wirt imagine Sophocles's tragedy as performed by five talentless actors who've never bothered to read the play but are half-heartedly trying to stage it, anyway (with intermittent musical assistance from some Weezer wannabes), based on their memory of a cliche-ridden experimental college production they may've seen several years ago. The ludicrous extremes to which they go are pathetically moving, as they, like most of us, try to wrest epic lives from farcical clutter. There's no mistaking the cast's significant acting chops; they're awful in unique, convincing, consistently surprising ways. Astonishingly, the play's final collapse feels truly tragic. This is smart stuff indeed. --Justin Hayford

Press: from The Chicago Reader