First viewed : 16 September 1986
Having completed the Shakespeare plays the year before, the BBC Two drama department turned their attention to the Greek playwrights with the three tragic plays by Sophocles broadcast on consecutive nights. I was interested because I'd studied the first one Oedipus Rex for A Levels three years earlier and I'd read the following two because they'd also been in the textbook we were given.
I think the story in the first one is pretty well known. Oedipus the king of Thebes is visited by a prophet bearing the exceedingly unwelcome news that the man he slew to get the throne and his bride was actually his father and his wife and mother to his four kids is actually his own mother. She tops herself and he is banished from the city by his brother-in-law Creon who then takes the throne himself. The second one Oedipus at Colonus isn't a barrel of laughs either with the blind Oedipus wandering the wastes as a beggar accompanied by loyal daughter Antigone and then plagued by unwelcome visitors including estranged son Polynices who receives only a curse for his trouble. The last one Antigone is more political in tone with a battle of wills between the titular heroine and the now tyrannical Creon over the burial of Polynices's body.
The plays were presented on a stark minimalist set with mix and match anachronistic clothing, Creon's final costume looking like it was on loan from General Pinochet. Anthony Quayle played Oedipus, something of a departure from his usual bluff and genial screen persona . John Shrapnel played the bullheaded Creon and Juliet Stevenson was the predictable choice for Antigone. The Chorus included such familiar faces as Ian Hogg, Peter Jeffrey and Bernard Hill.
It hasn't been repeated to date.
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