05 Apr Robert Icke’s Oedipus
I went to see Robert Ike‘s production of Oedipus last month and here are some thoughts and ramblings about it.
Robert Icke is a young, critically acclaimed British playwright renowned for his modern adaptations of classic works, so imagine my psychodynamic curiosity when Icke’s production of Oedipus came to the west end. What would his take on it be? And a modern twist too!
The thing about Oedipus is that anything related to Oedipus stirs up uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, which, when you actually think about it, is no surprise really when you consider the crux of the concept: a man (Oedipus) discovers, completely by accident, that he has unknowingly married his own mum (Jocasta), produced three kids with her, and somewhere along the way he accidentally killed his dad. Awkward. And highly improbable. And not really relatable. And if we think for a minute about Freud, I get the sense that people assume his key contribution to psychoanalytic thought is that men want to sleep with their mum and kill their father and this (perhaps rightly) scares people right off!! And it’s such a shame because the core themes of Freud’s thoughts on the Oedipus Complex are perhaps some of the most accurate and ground-breaking understanding of the human subconscious.
So in this post I’d like to think about jealousy as a key aspects of Icke’s play and connect this to what Freud was truly getting at; how as infants we must learn to navigate complicated feelings of jealousy and rivalry in order to arrive at a true sense of who we are and our place in relationships. It’s a short blog post, so I do this with the caveat that Freud’s ideas on the Oedipus Complex are vast and complicated, but if you are interested please have a read of the original Freud paper.
Icke’s stroke of genius portrays Oedipus as a powerful politician on the brink of a landslide victory worshiped by his wife (Jocasta). Below is her key opening speech:
Jocasta: “ and tonight is all about one man, one glorious wonderful man, who I know is one of the most important men in my life and in all our lives and to my mind one of the most important human beings in the world”.
Such adoration from his wife I’m sure you’ll agree! And if I’m being honest I don’t know many wives who would talk about their husbands in such tones. (Just to add here at this point in the play the audience are unaware that Jocasta is in fact his mum). But let’s flip the perspective here and imagine for a moment these words are spoken not in reference to her husband but instead a mother talking about her newborn son; immediately there is a sense of familiarity – the infant is literally the centre of mother’s universe and the most important human being in the world with seemingly magic powers ; mum’s world revolves around her baby’s needs: baby cries – she responds with feeding/changing/burping etc. In essence (and good maternal health) mother and baby exist as “one”, for without the infant there is no mother. As time passes, the baby learns and develops independence whilst Mother re-engages with other relationships; perhaps with husband / partner / family / work and at some point, the original mother/infant dynamic alters, leading the baby work through what Freud referred to as “the Oedipal trauma” – meaning the infant must figure out a key concept: Where is my place in this relationship? The infant realsies the relationship has shifted -he’s gone from the “all powerful infant” to ….. Having to share mum with another!!! Thus the infant acquires the (unbearable) knowledge that there is a hierarchy in this relationship (and indeed all relationships)…just where is his place?
As adults, we are constantly working though where we fit into relationships and the hurt this knowledge may cause us (what Freud is asking you to think about is “three way relationships” so you and two others). An example of this “working through” might perhaps be in a professional scenario, when we don’t get that job we interviewed for, which means that there is a reality we need to face that “some other” might be better/more qualified/ a better fit or whatever the reason. How do we, as adults, navigate this horrible truth? Do we get angry? Jealous? Rage? And how can we overcome this? At points in our life we all need to mourn the person we thought we were and work through the realisation that we are not “all powerful” and perhaps come to terms with the knowledge that someone else was better suited.
These jealous, resentful, uncomfortable feelings are evoked within families and within marriages, which is, for some of us, an uncomfortable truth we ignore. Think about when you become a father; you must reach an understanding that your wife loves your son more than you…and what does that mean for you? Can you sit with that knowledge or do you spend the rest of your son’s life unconsciously or subtly resenting him.
Icke brilliantly and subtly touched on this uncomfortable jealous father/son dynamic throughout his play. When Eteocles (Oedipus son) commented on election night: “we have suits but we are going to put them but we are not going to put them on yet because we will only find some way of ruining them because we always ruin everything” Suggesting perhaps at this sense within this child that he was in some way “destroying something” or getting in the way of something (his mum and dad‘s relationship). Further on in the play Oedipus says to his son: “ haven’t seen you for what three weeks?” Eteocles (the son) retorts: “it’s nine weeks but it’s fine”- again there is a subtle sense that on some level, dad doesn’t really care when he last saw his son, but perhaps mum definitely would know how many weeks I’ve been away for.?
Rivalry with mum, jealousy of your son, anger at yourself for who you are or who you thought you were are difficult truths to reconcile but this navigation, this “mourning” for who were are/were is all part of the human experience, and I believe that is the most uncomfortable truth of Oedipus.
By the way, Robert Icke will talk about his play at the Freud Museum – for a more in depth analysis log on and join him there.
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