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The pleasures of this production in the meantime are provided by the world of the play and its secondary characters. The clinic patients may not speak, but they are spoken for by their Theban elders, a robed man with the fervor of a country preacher (Jernard Burks), and a hobbling woman (Novella Nelson), supported by a carved three-legged cane, whose incantatory delivery suggests blues singing.
The sad representatives of a fate- beleaguered citizenry, they intermittently call forth, for the appeasing of the gods, a troupe of adolescent girls to perform a frenzied, ritual dance in abbreviated tunics. Onstage percussionists provide a soundtrack of tribal rhythms, wild and musical birds and the leitmotifs of American jazz; the choreography, by Kevin Iega Jeff, and the original score, by Rene McLean, are wonderfully vivid. And the bearers of bad tidings, the three visitors to the court of Oedipus who fill in the terrible clues to his grievous fate, are all rendered in touching, idiosyncratic performances.
In particular, as Teiresias the blind seer who knows the truth, and is brought by anger by Oedipus's doubt of him to make the first declaration that the king himself was the killer of the king Lou Ferguson does a riveting turn as a stiff-legged and feeble man whose rage is nonetheless terrifying. That he delivers his lines in a faintly Caribbean accent is an effective touch, a subtle underscoring of the production's reverence for the reach, across time and culture, of great drama.
OEDIPUS THE KING
By Sophocles; translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald; text consultant, Adrienne Kennedy; directed by Jonathan Wilson; sets by Scott Bradley; costumes by Susan Hilferty; lighting by Kevin Snow; original music by Ren้ McLean; sound by David Stephen Baker; choreographer, Kevin Iega Jeff; dramaturg, Christopher Baker; production stage manager, Stacy P. Hughes; associate artistic director, Tracy Brigden; general manager, John Conte; production manager, Jack O'Connor; assistant stage manager, Deborah Sullivan. Presented by Hartford Stage, Michael Wilson, artistic director; Elaine Calder, managing director; in collaboration with the Artists Collective, Dollie Mc Lean, executive director. At the Hartford Stage, Hartford.
WITH: Reg Flowers (Oedipus), Novella Nelson (Priestess and an Elder of Thebes), Michael Early (Creon), Jernard Burks (Elder of Thebes), Lou Ferguson (Teiresias), Stephanie Berry (Jocasta), Helmar Augustus Cooper (Messenger of Corinth), Lawrence James (Shepherd) and Saidah Ekulona (Servant in the Royal Household).
