Review: A Timely Take on ‘Oedipus’ by Way of South Central Los Angeles
“…In America, there are stories we like to tell. Stories about meritocracy and opportunity, about talent, hope and help. We tell them, in part, so that we don’t have to voice less comfortable truths — that the circumstances of a person’s birth often prophesy the life that follows.
That’s uniquely true of Oedipus, the limping princeling fated to kill his father and marry his mother. He’s crossed seas and centuries to appear in Luis Alfaro’s vigorous and pointed “Oedipus El Rey,” at the Public Theater, which resets the tale in modern-day South Central Los Angeles. Directed by Chay Yew with energy and flair, it’s the most successful offering yet from the Sol Project, an initiative dedicated to producing the work of Latinx playwrights.
The play opens in a prison complex, as a convict chorus rushes around the stage in orange scrubs and tries to decide what story to tell. Stories are boring, some prisoners say; they’re depressing, they don’t change anything. But one chorus member says, “Stories are all we got.” So they shed the scrubs and take on the roles in this Oedipus update.
As written by Sophocles, the original “Oedipus Rex” is an oldie but a goody, provided your definition of a goody is heavy on the incest and the self-mutilation. And so it goes here. When Laius (Juan Francisco Villa), a Los Angeles gangster, learns that his unborn son will kill him, he arranges to have the baby killed, slashing the bottoms of his feet for good measure. “I don’t want him chasing me in the afterlife,” Laius says…”
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