Oedipus review – delirious dancers and booming soundtrack shake the plasterwork

Old Vic, London
Rami Malek’s outsider vibes enliven seamy, superb new staging of Sophocles’ family tragedy

Dance in Greek tragedy – why not? The ancient Athenians did it, their choruses a weave of sound and movement, though no one really knows what shapes they threw back in the fifth century. They probably didn’t give the hands-in-the-air delirium of Hofesh Shechter’s spectacular dancers in this new version of Oedipus – but dance becomes the irresistible core of the tragedy.

Shechter and Matthew Warchus co-direct a text by Ella Hickson (The Writer). In a freak of scheduling, they follow Robert Icke’s inexorable modern-dress Oedipus: two very different takes on Sophocles’ family values.

Here, Thebes gasps with drought under a harsh red sun and Tom Visser’s lighting, a dust storm in charcoal and crimson. King Oedipus resolves to save his people, either by leading them to fertile ground or solving the ancient murder that a faction of hardline believers argue has angered the gods. Big mistake, huge.

Rami Malek’s air of having dropped from another planet has served him well on film as a Bond villain or Freddie Mercury. He brings outsider vibes to Oedipus – speaking in an elusive American drawl, adopting the mantle of leadership like a haunted robot.

At the Old Vic theatre, London, until 29 March