Oedipus will be staged at Vidya Mandir today, 7.30pm. Tickets at Vodafone stores, the venue and www.indianstage.in

It’s time to revisit that old history book with the chapter on the Greek tragedian Sophocles as the 12th Vodafone Odeon Theatre Festival, partnered by t2, presents Oedipus.

“It is not just Sophocles’s Oedipus. My play draws upon the original Greek mythology surrounding this character. And then there is Seneca’s Oedipus (the Roman tutor and adviser to emperor Nero), which is an excellent retelling of the story,” said director Anirban Bhattacharya of theatre group Drishyapat.

With Debshankar Halder in the lead, the play sticks to the basic story of the Theban king who was abandoned by his parents as there was a prophecy that the child would kill his father and marry the mother. Oedipus is raised away from home, but comes to know of the prophecy. Fearing he would bring ill-luck to his adoptive parents, he leaves the kingdom, only to return to Thebes at a time when it is under the curse of Sphinx. He manages to solve the riddles posed by Sphinx and frees the city. With the king’s death, Oedipus marries the queen and settles down, only to learn the cruel truth that the king and queen of Thebes are his real parents.

“The Greek tragedy remains intact in the play but there is a slight variation in two places. While Sophocles’s script says that it was the mother who gave up her child, we show the father trying to kill the child because of the prophecy, as it is quite unnatural for a mother to do so,” Anirban explained. The second variation comes when Oedipus learns the truth. “While the actual version says he blinded himself, we have improvised on the mother’s reaction... she can’t let go of her emotions and comes to see her child. But she’s unable to take the pain and kills herself,” he added.

The play has a deeper meaning too. “The main idea behind this play is the destructive situation of the world today. We are destroying Mother Nature with our experimentation and science, robbing it off everything that it has given us freely. The story of Oedipus reflects a similar story of the mother and child,” said Anirban.

A symbolical set shaped like a mother’s womb will be used, standing at a height of 4.5ft. “Oedipus is a larger-than-life character and playing such a character is quite a challenge. Sombhu Mitra had once staged this character in a play called Raja Oedipus, so one might think what’s new about this play. Here the text is new and it is a new drama,” said Debshankar Halder.

Sreyoshi Dey