We live in a debased age, when melisma
is a pointless vocal gymnastic exercise in every other pop or RnB song,
when stage musicals not only pre-plan their encores but include them in
the printed running order. But briefly in Edinburgh we have been
reminded of a truer time, at once from decades and from centuries ago.
Lee Breuer’s adaptation of Sophocles’
Oedipus
At Colonus into a gospel church service was first seen here as a
work-in-progress on the Fringe in 1982; in 2010 it plays the
3000-capacity Playhouse as part of the International Festival, and its
atmosphere fills the building.
Sophocles’ latest surviving play, in which the aged Oedipus finds
welcome in the grove of Colonus near Athens and dies there in peace,
adapts well to a celebration of Christian values of mercy and
redemption. Oedipus is portrayed collectively by The Blind Boys Of
Alabama, possibly the most renowned group still surviving from the
mid-20th-century golden age of gospel; when the blinded former king
first enters the grove, he is repulsed with a chorus of “Stop! Do Not
Go On” by The Legendary Soul Stirrers, from whose ranks half a century
ago emerged Sam Cooke. Even the preacher whose spoken sermon passages
bridge the musical numbers, the Rev Dr Earl F Miller, bears a slight
resemblance to the Rev Al Green.
The performers (who enter through the auditorium, taking our hands as
they pass) do not act the story out in a theatrical sense, but
enact it as they flow across the
stage in musical numbers scored by Bob Telson which range from a simple
solo ode to a stately hymn to an all-out jubilee. The venerable Blind
Boy-in-chief Jimmy Carter (not that one) is at one vocal climax hoisted
up bodily by one of the chorus, and is later carried offstage to
Oedipus’ final resting place on a grand piano lid. There is little need
for the vaguely celestial-looking but frankly impenetrable series of
paintings projected on to the ruined-temple set; all the colour and
action required are provided by the cast as, dressed in
African-American finery, they ensure that we cannot remain deaf to the
message. Jevetta Steele as Ismene and Willie Rogers of the Soul
Stirrers have supremely sweet voices, and on Saturday evening the
second-act celebration of Oedipus’ ascension “Lift Him Up” drew two
spontaneous encores and a standing ovation with ten minutes still to
go. Even the most staid of the Edinburgh audience almost managed to
clap along properly on the off-beat. Almost.
Written for the Financial
Times.