William Shatner is among the masked chorus of Theban elders in this Canadian production of OEDIPUS REX.
Sophocles’ play OEDIPUS REX opens after he has long ruled Thebes, a position he earned as a result of solving the riddle of a Sphinx that had been terrifying the city. Oedipus then married the widowed queen of Thebes, Jocasta, and fathered four chil- dren by her. But when a plague once again is visited upon the city, Oedipus vows that he will discover the cause. The play’s opening question: “What is caus- ing the plague?” shifts when Oedipus’ emissary, Creon, re- turns from the oracle with the answer: that the city must find who killed its former ruler and bring him to justice. Thus the question shifts to: “Who killed the former ruler of Thebes, Laius?” The city must solve the mystery of Laius’ murder, victim of a seemingly random act of vio- lence while traveling, and then punish the killer in order to save itself. As Oedipus conducts a relentless interrogation, his own guilt becomes more apparent, and the question shifts for this self-assured, privileged hero, whose place seemed as fixed as
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the stars to “Who am I?” The terrible truth topples Oedipus from his high position, but it does not destroy his dignity.
It is little wonder that the an- cient critic, Aristotle, pointed to OEDIPUS REX as the best example of tragic drama from the Greek world. Nor is it surprising that Sigmund Freud formulated his theories about psychology from his reading of the ancient Greeks and from Shakespeare (another perceptive student of human nature), even adapting his termi- nology from his study of the play (“Oedipal complex”). The truths contained in Sophocles’ drama, and his acute handling of irony in particular, render the play timeless indeed, and it is there- fore not surprising that the work is recast again and again. The script for this filmed pro-
duction of OEDIPUS REX, by the Stratford Shakespearean Festi- val Foundation of Canada, is based on a translation by the superb Irish poet William Butler Yeats, and this is one of its great- est strengths. Yeats shows a great restraint of language when
it is called for, and captures something of the stark, aphoris- tic style so peculiar to Greek drama, with its nuggets of wis- dom scattered throughout the play. “For time alone shows the just man, but a day can show a knave,” and “You won the mas- tery, but could not keep it to the end,” says Creon (Robert Goodier) to Oedipus (in an ex- cellent, dynamic performance by Douglas Campbell). “Time waits, eagle-eyed,” to ensnare Oedipus in his doom, observes the Cho- rus of Theban elders—one of whom, incidentally, is played by a young William Shatner. Two other noteworthy fea- tures of this very fine 1957 Ca- nadian production are costume design and its direction. The costumes consist of masks that express the position and/or emotional status of the charac- ters. For instance, Oedipus wears a mask of gilded gold with points for a crown; the blind sage Tiresius is clad in white, with black holes in place of eyes (to represent his blindness) and claws for hands (to suggest his
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