Vulnerable, terrifying Rami Malek will have you in rhapsodies

Oedipus
Old Vic Theatre, London, until March 29

In contrast to Robert Icke’s modern-dress and politically on-trend Oedipus last year, Hofesh Shechter and Matthew Warchus have come up with a more lyrical and poetic adaptation of Sophocles’ classic that emerges literally and figuratively out of the mists of time.

Dressed in a natty summer suit, Rami Malek in the title role delivers a high-definition performance in which he manages to be at once vulnerable and terrifying. Every movement, expression and vocal inflection has clearly been carefully thought through and the result is perfectly controlled poetry in motion.

Stardom is a strange and indefinable quality that has nothing whatsoever to do with looks, but you can’t take your eyes off an individual on stage who is blessed with it. Malek has this quality in abundance and more’s the pity so far as his supporting players are concerned: Indira Varma as Jocasta and Nicholas Khan as Creon seem at best spectral characters beside him.

Tom Visser’s eerie lighting and Shechter’s intricate dance routines and music interspersing the action add enormously to the power of the piece which the writer Ella Hickson has pared down to the essentials.

Malek’s stage experience is limited – before Bohemian Rhapsody and No Time to Die he trod the boards only in off-Broadway shows in New York – but he is the master of all he surveys in this assured and intelligent production. The memory of Malek’s face, etched in pain and despair, as he realises the full horror of his situation, will stay with you long after the curtain has gone down. The best acting currently to be had in the capital.