Oedipus Schmoedipus

Imagine taking all the “important” plays of the great Western Canon and stripping them right down to the meaty bits—the bits where people die. Well, you don’t have to imagine, because it’s been done already by Zoë Coombs Marr, Mish Grigor and Natalie Rose in Oedipus Schmoedipus. A revival of the show that played at the Belvoir in 2014 but with Shelly Lauman replacing Coombs Marr on stage, Oedipus Schmoedipus cuts and pastes death scenes from Aeschylus, Chekhov, Euripides, Gogol, Ibsen, Molière, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Wilde and about a dozen others.

The opening scene is fantastic: it’s fast-paced, gory fun, and you’ll recognise the famous scenes. Dressed in pristine white clothes standing in front of a glaring white backdrop and on a shiny white floor, Gregor and Lauman proceed to splatter blood everywhere. Even though the audience is fully aware of the artifice and you can see the fake blood, tubes and the occasional stretchy rubber body part, the violence is real enough to draw gasps.

From then the show becomes a deconstruction of the death scenes of The Canon. Starting with a little riff on the pretentiousness of theatre (perhaps a nod to that famous early Rik Mayall sketch), Grigor and Lauman take swipes at the whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, Christianity and sameness of the theatrical conventions of people dying. Using a chorus of locals to flesh out the bodies on stage, the Grigor and Lauman use puns, some slapstick, surreal humour, satire and a lot of deep sarcasm. The timing seems a bit flat, particularly with the sillier wordplay which needs to be delivered with speed, and I’d imagine that’s to do with the loss of comedian Coombs Marr from the cast. The jokes suffered from repetition, which is unsurprising I guess given there’s a lot of repetition in the material. You do end up feeling gently bludgeoned with memento mori.

You’ll probably enjoy this most if you recognise the scenes, but even if you don’t this is good blood-splattered fun and the first scene is brilliant.

Cathy Bannister

Photographer: Rob Maccoll.