I’m Not a Regular Mom, I’m a Cool Mom: Robert Icke Does Oedipus

It’s where we learn her story in all its graphic detail, and though Manville is one hell of an actor—utterly at ease in one moment, ferocious in the next, destroyed in the one after that—even she can’t quite mask the overwriting, the authorial frisson over putting this character through really bad things, but, you know, in order to demonstrate that they’re really bad. It’s a shame, because this Oedipus, when it tries a little less hard, is also full of potency. Manville and Strong crackle together — their chemistry is steamy and genuine and, in some of the production’s best moments, after all terrible secrets have been revealed, so is their body-wracking devastation.