A re-imagined Oedipus in "Blind"

The NY Times review:

Near the end of “Blind,” moments after the half-naked main character has had feverish sex with his mother, then choked her to death (per her wishes) after she crushed his eyeballs with her thumbs mid-coitus, he crawls across the floor to the telephone, somehow dials, reaches a maid in his palace and, in bloody pain, asks, “Could you come up here, please?”

It’s that “please” that draws yet another round of snickers and, for at least one person in the audience, a brow wrinkled in bewilderment. While it’s always obvious that the playwright, Craig Wright, has embarked on a modern retelling of the Oedipus story, it’s never clear why he’s doing it.

After some 2,500 years, the Oedipus myth remains genuinely powerful: tragic, provocative, shrewd. It’s no wonder playwrights have sought to retell the tale; Neil LaBute’s “Wrecks” is one recent, clever example. Yet Mr. Wright has drained the play of any reason for being: throughout “Blind,” at the Rattlestick Theater, there is no mystery (the two know early on that they are mother and son) or incisive allegory. (Nor is there a definite setting — aspects of the ancient and modern worlds are weirdly mashed together.)

To be sure, “Blind” holds promise at the start — Mr. Wright’s riff on the original joins the two characters just as angry citizens of Thebes are discovering their secret, and the tension is palpable. Yet that anxiety never varies, and for 75 minutes the miserable lovers scream at each other incessantly, first casting blame for their calamity, then detailing their own list of faults.

Since the actors aren’t given much to do except shout, it’s difficult to assess their talents. Seth Numrich, as Oedipus, exploits a bit of range as he wavers between anger and somewhat less anger, while Veanne Cox looks on in a never-ending expression of horror. Danielle Slavick, as the maid, delivers a screed at the close that does little more than delay the longed-for final curtain.

Mr. Wright surely had a rationale for this play, directed by Lucie Tiberghien. Perhaps he had a deeper idea to explore or some excuse for having Oedipus speak of an actual sphinx and of travel by carriage soon after reading an e-mail message from Creon on a vibrating iPhone. What he didn’t have, apparently, is a thought for his audience’s time.