Oedipus faces a birther rumor

Mark Strong and Lesley Manville shine in a sleek, modern version on Broadway.

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JULIETA CERVANTES MARK STRONG and Lesley Manville play a political power couple.

It's election night in Robert Icke's "Oedipus," a modern retelling of Sophocles' "Oedipus the King" that must be the buzziest, if not the chicest, Broadway offering of the fall season.

The production, a prestigious London import that opened at Studio 54 on Thursday under smart and sleek direction, stars a charismatic Mark Strong in the title role. His elegant and urbane Oedipus, a politician on the cusp of a momentous victory, prides himself on not playing by the old rules. A straight talker who has made transparency his calling card, he frequently veers off script in paroxysms of candor, to the chagrin of Creon (John Carroll Lynch), his brother-in-law who has been steering the campaign to what looks like a landslide victory.

But “count no mortal happy till/he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain,” as the chorus intones at the end of Sophocles’ tragedy. There is no chorus in Icke’s version, but the sentiment holds, as Oedipus unravels the puzzle of his identity with the same relentlessness that has brought him to the brink of electoral triumph.

A birther conspiracy has been raised by his political opponent, and Oedipus, speaking impromptu to reporters onscreen at the start of the play, promises to release his birth certificate and put an end to the controversy. What’s more, he vows to reopen an investigation into the death of Laius, the former leader who died 34 years ago under circumstances that have allowed rumor and innuendo to fester.

Oedipus calls himself Laius’ “successor, the inheritor of his legacy,” and in true Sophoclean fashion he speaks more than he knows. Jocasta (Lesley Manville in top form), Oedipus’ wife, was married to Laius, and so Oedipus is occupying his predecessor's place in more ways than one.