Hassan Estakrian | This Week in New York

Sound and image create a confusing cacophony in Elli Papakonstantinou’s OEDIPUS: Sex with Mum Was Blinding (photo by Carol Rosegg)

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
September 25-29, $30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/oedipus

Shortly after Elli Papakonstantinou’s OEDIPUS: Sex with Mum Was Blinding begins, the sarcastic MC (Misha Piatigorsky), a cross between Joel Grey’s emcee from Cabaret and the Joker from Batman recently escaped from Arkham Asylum, brings up the topic of free will and declares, “Oh! Did I say? . . . You are not allowed to leave this room until this is over!” Not everyone inside BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space obeyed, as there were a handful of walk-outs during the ninety-minute production, but they would have fared better if they had stuck it out a little longer; while the first hour of this multimedia collaboration between the Athens-based ODC Ensemble and New York City’s the Directors Company is a chaotic mess, things improve significantly when Papakonstantinou, who is credited with the concept, stage direction, libretto, and lighting, turns her attention to the specific matter at hand: the tragic story of Oedipus (Lito Messini), his wife and mother, Jocasta (Nassia Gofa), and their children.

For much of the show, the audience has no idea where to look or what to listen to as ideas of responsibility, judgment, faith, and determinism are raised. A doctor (science adviser Manos Tsakiris) talks to a woman (Theodora Loukas) about a dream she had. A boy (Elias Husiak) can’t recognize his own face. A three-woman chorus (Anastasia Katsinavaki, Messini, Gofa) sings about riddles while wearing futuristic sci-fi helmets. Smoke drifts up from a tray of dry ice. A male-voiced Siri talks in mathematical equations. Audience members are practically forced to answer questions about their own image and relationship with their parents, then shout out four pieces of text that are in the program. And live footage of extreme close-ups of faces, hands, feet, and nostrils are projected onto a large rear screen along with shots of car traffic, causing yet more confusion. I was most riveted by the MC’s long, thin baton he used for conducting, hoping that, when he put it away in the front pocket of his shirt, it would not end up poking him in the eye. (This is Oedipus, after all.)

Misha Piatigorsky stars as a sarcastic piano-playing MC and conductor in OEDIPUS: Sex with Mum Was Blinding (photo by Carol Rosegg)

But then we reach Level Three and the actual story of Jocasta and Oedipus starts playing out onstage with the characters themselves (instead of being told to us in the third person), and we are lifted by Gofa’s lovely jazz phrasings and Messini’s beautiful soprano. The narrative suddenly wraps around us and we feel, for the first time, emotional resonance. The MC’s expert piano playing and co-composer Julia Kent’s splendid cello merge together in wonderful ways, as the earlier theories that were so much balderdash now make sense. It’s too bad this experimental Oedipus didn’t start off like this. “We are haunted by the myth of our potential,” the woman says, which could be about the show itself, the audience haunted by what could have been.

(photo by Elias Moraitis) OEDIPUS - Photos OEDIPUS

Elli Papakonstantinou’s multimedia, immersive adaptation of Oedipus Rex debuts at BAM this week (photo by Elias Moraitis)

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
September 25-29, $30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org/oedipus

Perhaps more than any other Greek tragedy, Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex lends itself to all kinds of adaptations. The violent tale of murder, suicide, incest, and self-mutilation has been turned into operas, films, oratorios, and plays in multiple languages around the world; among those who have tackled the 429 BCE work are Pier Paolo Pasolini (Edipo Re), Luis Alfaro (Oedipus El Rey), Toshio Matsumoto (Funeral Parade of Roses), Gabriel García Márquez (Edipo Alcalde), Ola Rotimi (The Gods Are Not to Blame), Peter Schickele (Oedipus Tex), Jean Cocteau (La Machine Infernale), Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), German comedian Bodo Wartke (könig ödipus), and many others, moving the story to South Central LA, the Philippines, Japan, Nigeria, Colombia, and even outer space.

Greek avant-garde creator Elli Papakonstantinou transforms Sophocles’s play into an immersive hybrid opera for the multimedia OEDIPUS: Sex with Mum Was Blinding, running at the BAM Fisher September 25-29. The hundred-minute piece, a collaboration between the Athens-based ODC Ensemble and New York City’s the Directors Company, features a score composed by Tilemachos Moussas and Julia Kent and played live by Kent on cello, Misha Piatigorsky on piano, and Barbara Nerness on live electronics; real-time video by Hassan Estakhrian and Stephanie Sherriff, with cinematic environments by Sherriff; costumes by Jolene Richardson; and masks by Maritina Keleri and Chrysanthi Avloniti. Papakonstantinou, whose previous work includes Louisette: The Backstage of Revolution, Touching the Bottom of the Sea, and The Kindly Ones (at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial), is credited with the concept, stage direction, libretto, and lighting. Lito Messini stars as Oedipus, with Nassia Gofa as Jocasta, Elias Husiak as the boy, Anastasia Katsinavaki as Teiresias, Theodora Loukas as the woman, Misha Piatigorsky as the MC, and Manos Tsakiris as the researcher. Papakonstantinou developed parts of the show during a residency at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics, where she worked with artists and scientists to address such questions as “Are we free?,” “Dο we experience free will?,” and “Are there real alternatives, or is all that takes place the outcome of necessity?” University of London professor Manos Tsakiris served as the scientific adviser for yet another unusual and original adaptation of this classic story.