There is no reason to be put off from this play by a lack of familiarity with the Sophocles’ classic – a handy plot synopsis is presented on arrival and will tell you all you need to know to follow this production.  The play is performed by a troupe of actors stuck telling the same tale over and over again for millennia.  It aims to be almost if not quite as surreal as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which uses Shakespeare’s Hamlet as ‘inspiration’, except that it makes no effort to be funny and has a very specific point to make. The cast question the need to tell the same story every time, but still reach the familiar ending – the tragedy of the tragic genre, in the writers’ view, is that choices and personal responsibility are always suppressed.

The acting is consistently good and at times superb. Jacob Shephard played a resolute Oedipus, but Will Peck was the outstanding acting talent as Tiresias, varying tone, stature and force of delivery to marvellous effect. The chorus worked with tight coordination and used the natural variations in their voices to give the choral odes an eerie dissonance.  However, the more rebellious Chorus 6, played by Helena Fallstrom, was vehemently scathing to the point that it grew a little monotonous. Other main characters could also have made more of their roles: the part of Jocasta offered Laura Profumo more opportunities to make her mark on the play than she took, while Stephen Bermingham played an easily forgettable Creon – not sinister, not sincere, not really anything.

The directing and lighting, however, were indisputably excellent. The chorus shuffled around the stage in perfect timing and the actors’ positions were always carefully thought through. At all times the actors were lit just well enough to be properly seen and appreciated, without compromising the overall atmosphere.

This is a piece of new writing by Ceci Mourkogiannis and Heather Williams, who have also directed this production, and the script could have been more subtle. Their point on the bankruptcy of tragedy is made very bluntly about ten minutes before the end, which means that what should be the climax of the play becomes a recapitulation.  While they make an interesting point, it is not profoundly unique and should not have taken an hour and half to take us there. Fifteen minutes could be cut from the running time, a perfect amount of time to give the audience an interval.

In any case, audiences may be small because this play has desperately lacked publicity.  According to Camdram, the play was due to open on Monday, and the BATS website has not been updated since March 2011.  An email to the Classics Faculty is an obvious and useful step that has not been taken to advertise a play that shows a good deal of promise.  While Mourkogiannis and Williams should be encouraged to continue writing, it is clear that their talents lie in directing.