SONIA FRIEDMAN PRODUCTIONS
ANNOUNCE ON-SALE FOR
OEDIPUS
CREATED BY ROBERT ICKE, AFTER SOPHOCLES
STARRING MARK STRONG AND LESLEY MANVILLE
WYNDHAM’S THEATRE
4 OCTOBER 2024 – 4 JANUARY 2025
Sonia Friedman Productions (SFP) today release new artwork and announce the on-sale for the strictly limited West End run of Oedipus, a new adaptation created by Robert Icke after Sophocles. Icke directs Mark Strong (OEDIPUS) and Lesley Manville (JOCASTA) with full casting to be announced at a later date.
Also announced are Hildegard Bechtler (Set Design), Wojciech Dziedzic (Costume Design), Natasha Chivers (Lighting Design), Tom Gibbons (Sound Design), Tal Yarden (Video Design) and Julia Horan CDG (Casting Director).
The strictly limited run at Wyndham’s Theatre opens on Tuesday 15 October, with previews from Friday 4 October 2024, and runs until Saturday 4 January 2025.
Behind every great man is a great woman.
Election night. The polls predict a landslide victory. Everything is about to change.
Starring the internationally renowned, multi-award-winning Mark Strong and Lesley Manville, Sophocles’ epic tragedy is transformed into an essential, explosive human thriller.
After his revelatory Oresteia, visionary director Robert Icke (1984, The Doctor) reimagines another Ancient Greek tragedy, bringing the secrets of the past bursting into the present.
Icke’s production was originally produced in Dutch by Internationaal Theater Amsterdam and was presented at the Edinburgh International Festival.
Tickets are on sale for DMT+ members now, with general booking opening on Wednesday 20 March at 10am.
Mark Strong said today, “It’s an immense privilege to be returning to the West End in such incredible company – to take on this role opposite the incomparable Lesley Manville, and to reunite with Robert Icke, undoubtedly one of the great visionary directors currently on the world stage. Rob has brought the story bang up to date with the flair with which he approaches classic text, making his Oedipus a modern thriller for our times.”
Lesley Manville said today, “I’m very excited to return to the West End and take on the role of Jocasta in Robert Icke’s extraordinary adaptation of Oedipus. It’s my first time performing a Greek tragedy and my first time working with the brilliant Mark Strong. Lucky me.”
Robert Icke said today, “I’m delighted to be bringing Oedipus to the West End, and am hugely looking forward to collaborating once more with the matchless Mark Strong and to get to work for the first time with the wonderful Lesley Manville.”
Across the run Sonia Friedman Productions will be offering 1000 tickets at £30 exclusively for those aged 30 and under, reflecting its ongoing commitment to ticket accessibility within the arts. For more details and to hear when these tickets go on-sale, please join the Sonia Friedman Productions mailing list https://www.soniafriedman.com/subscribe
Sonia Friedman Productions presents
Mark Strong and Lesley Manville in
OEDIPUS
Created by Robert Icke, after Sophocles
Set design by Hildegard Bechtler
Costume design by Wojciech Dziedzic
Lighting design by Natasha Chivers
Sound design by Tom Gibbons
Video design by Tal Yarden
Casting by Julia Horan CDG
Wyndham’s Theatre
4 October 2024 – 4 January 2025
Mark Strong (OEDIPUS)
Multi-award-winning actor Mark Strong returns to the stage. He previously appeared in A View from the Bridge (Young Vic, West End and Broadway – Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Play and Tony Award nomination); The Red Barn, Closer, Death of a Salesman, Murmuring Judges, Fuente Ovejuna, Napoli Milionaria, King Lear and Richard III (National Theatre); Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya (Donmar Warehouse – Olivier Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor); Speed the Plow (New Ambassadors Theatre); The Iceman Cometh (Almeida Theatre); The Thickness of Skin and The Treatment (Royal Court Theatre); Hess is Dead, The Plantagenets and The Man Who Came To Dinner (RSC).
His television credits include Temple (also series Executive Producer); Deep State; Low Winter Sun; The Long Firm (Broadcast Guild Award for Best Actor and BAFTA nomination); Prime Suspect; Fields of Gold; The Jury; Anna Karenina; Our Friends in the North and the forthcoming Dune: Prophecy (HBO Max).
An acclaimed film actor, he recently appeared in The Critic with Ian McKellen; Dead Shot with Felicity Jones; Nocebo with Eva Green; Murder Mystery 2 with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston (Netflix) and will next appear on screen in various projects including The End We Start From with Jodie Comer and Benedict Cumberbatch; Shadow Force opposite Omar Sy and Kerry Washington and Atlas opposite Jennifer Lopez.
His other film credits include Todd Field’s Tar with Cate Blanchett; Sam Mendes’ 1917; Miss Sloane with Jessica Chastain; Cruella alongside Emma Stone; The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley; The Kingsman films with Taron Egerton and Colin Firth; Before I Go To Sleep with Nicole Kidman;Thomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with Gary Oldman; Peter Weir’s The Way Back; John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard; Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood with Russell Crowe; Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law; Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern; The Young Victoria opposite Emily Blunt; Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty; Danny Boyle’s Sunshine; Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana with George Clooney; Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist and Thomas Vinterberg’s It’s All About Love.
Lesley Manville (JOCASTA)
Lesley’s notable television credits include Princess Margaret in award-winning drama, The Crown, for Netflix, BBC’s drama Sherwood (for which she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the 2023 BAFTAs), which is returning for a second series. Mum (RTS Best Female Comedy Performance and two BAFTA nominations for Best Female Performance in a Comedy), Magpie Murders for BBC and PBS, similarly set to return for a second series titled Moonflower Murders. Lesley can currently be seen in Citadel for Prime Video alongside Richard Madden and Stanley Tucci. Upcoming roles include Alfonso Cuaron’s thriller series, Disclaimer. Lesley’s further TV credits include I Am Maria for BBC, River (BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress), Save Me Too, Talking Heads, World On Fire and Harlots.
Her roles in film include Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread (Academy Award nomination for Best Performance by An Actress in a Supporting Role, BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress, Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress), the titular role as Mrs Harris in Mrs Harris Goes To Paris for Focus Features (which earnt Lesley a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress) Let Him Go, Ordinary Love, Misbehaviour. In addition, Lesley is also known for her collaboration with Mike Leigh in projects such as, Another Year (NBR Best Actress Award, Critics’ Circle Best Actress Award and BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress), and All Or Nothing (Critics’ Circle Best Actress Award), Topsy-Turvy, High Hopes and Grown Ups, to name a few. Upcoming projects include Sam Taylor-Johnson’s upcoming Amy Winehouse biopic, Back To Black, Kasia Adamik’s upcoming Cold War feature, Winter Of The Crow, Cold Storage starring opposite Liam Neeson- a thriller about a spiralling virus and Luca Guadagnino’s feature film, Queer opposite Daniel Craig.
On stage, Lesley’s theatre credits include Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress), Ghosts (Olivier Award for Best Actress and Critics Circle Best Actress Award), Grief (Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress), Top Girls and The Visit. Further credits include Six Degrees Of Separation and All About My Mother at the Old Vic Theatre and Some Girls and The Cherry Orchard in the West End.
For her contributions to Drama and Charity, Lesley was honoured with a CBE in 2021.
Robert Icke is an award-winning writer and director, working in theatre and on screen.
His recent productions include Judas, Children of Nora, and Oedipus at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, where until 2023 he was Ibsen Artist in Residence. His adaptation of Animal Farm played an extensive national tour in 2022 and is slated for a London transfer. His monologue condensation of Enemy of the People starred Ann Dowd at Park Avenue Armory and was one of the first new pieces of theatre to play in New York post the shutdown. He is directing Ian McKellen in Player Kings at the Noël Coward Theatre, 1 April – 22 June 2024, previewing in Wimbledon and Manchester from March.
In six years at the Almeida, five of his productions transferred to the West End, and four to New York. These included his adaptations of The Wild Duck, Mary Stuart (also West End and National tour), Uncle Vanya, Oresteia (also West End; Schauspiel Stuttgart; Park Avenue Armory), and 1984 (co-created with Duncan Macmillan, also Broadway; West End; national and international tours). As a director, his productions included Hamlet (also West End; Park Avenue Armory; and broadcast on BBC2); The Fever and Mr Burns. His final production at the Almeida was The Doctor, which played last summer at Park Avenue Armory, in the West End in 2022, and remains in repertoire at both the Burgtheater in Vienna and Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, as well as in numerous new productions across the globe.
His awards include two Evening Standard ‘Best Director’ Awards; the Critics’ Circle Award, the Kurt Hübner Award (for his debut production in Germany); and the Olivier Award for ‘Best Director’, of which he was the youngest ever winner. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Hildegard Bechtler (Set Design)
Hildegard Bechtler is an award-winning designer based in London and working internationally. Work in theatre includes designs for the Almeida Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Old Vic, Donmar, on Broadway and extensively in the West End including Top Hat, Oresteia (both Olivier-nominated for best set design), Mary Stuart, Hamlet, Consent, Arcadia and The Crucible. Credits for the National Theatre include Antony and Cleopatra, Hansard, After the Dance (Olivier Award) and Iphigenia at Aulis (Evening Standard Award nomination). Credits for the Royal Court include The Seagull, Krapp’s Last Tape, My Name Is Rachel Corrie. Recent work includes The Doctor, Hamlet/Oresteia and Enemy of the People at the Park Avenue Armory; Four Quartets in the West End; Judas, Nora and Oedipus for Internationaal Theatre Amsterdam, The Doctor in the West End, at the Burgtheater Vienna and at the Adelaide Festival and Iwanow at the Staatstheater Stuttgart. Her many designs in opera and ballet include productions for English National Opera, La Scala Milan, Glyndebourne and the world premieres of The Cellist for the Royal Ballet and Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel at the Salzburger Festspiele, the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House. She won the Australian Green Room Award for Best Opera Design for Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at Sydney Opera House. Upcoming work includes a world premiere for Zurich Ballet; and Dr Strangelove in the West End.
Wojciech Dziedzic (Costume Design)
Wojciech Dziedzic designs costumes for opera, theatre and musical and leads, in parallel, a career of a stylist. He studied fashion design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, institutions in which he later taught. Between 2010 and 2019, he directed the fashion department of the Poznań School of Design in Poland.
Recent credits include Simon Boccanegra (New National Theatre in Tokyo); Die Blume von Hawaii (Theater Magdeburg); Shirine (Opéra de Lyon); Acis and Galatea (Concertgebouw Amsterdam); Keine Stille außer der des Windes (Nationaltheater Mannheim); Cardillac (Polish National Opera); Anatomy of a Suicide (Berliner Ensemble); Apocalypse Arabe (Aix en Provence); Ivanov (Schauspiel Stuttgart); Les Indes Galantes (Opéra national de Paris); Aus Licht (Dutch National Opera); Tristan and Isolde, Penthesilea (La Monnaie Brussels); The Crucible (Theatre Basel, Dir. Robert Icke); Eugene Onegin, Il Serpente di Bronzo and A Wintery Spring (Oper Frankfurt); Invasion-Explosion (Holland Festival); Shirine, GerMANIA, Macbeth (Opéra de Lyon); The Glass Menagerie (Toneelgroep Amsterdam and Broadway); Nora, A Sort of Hades, Blindeness, Phaedra, Crave, Caligula (Theater Utrecht); Fidelio (Erl Festival); Boris Godunov, the Conquest of Mexico, Bomarzo, Lohengrin, El Público, Brokeback Mountain (Teatro Real Madrid); Oedipus, From The Life of The Marionettes, The Maids, Mary Stuart, Danton’s Death, Nora, Angels in America, And never we’ll be parted, The Miser, All my Sons (Internationaal Theater Amsterdam); The Crucible (Broadway, Dir. Ivo van Hove); Cries and Whispers (BAM); Mazeppa (Komische Oper Berlin).
Natasha Chivers (Lighting Design)
Natasha’s awards and nominations includes: Winner of the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for a Play, and nominated for an Olivier and Tony Award for Best Lighting Design in a Play for Prima Facie.She won the Olivier Award for best lighting for Sunday in the Park with George. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for 1984 and for an Olivier Award for Oresteia
Her extensive work in theatre includes: The Hills of California (West End); Prima Facie (Harold Pinter Theatre/ Broadway); SYLVIA, The American Clock (Old Vic); Peaky Blinders (Rambert); Doctor, Hamlet, Oresteia (Almeida/ West End/ Park Avenue Armory); Enemy of People (Park Avenue Armory, New York); Judas (Internationaal Theater, Amsterdam) Mates in Chelsea, Shoe Lady, White Pearl, The Cane, Bad Roads, Mistress Contract, Fireworks (Royal Court); Ivanov (Staatstheater, Stuttgart); ; Kan Ya Ma Kan (Riyadh); Message in a Bottle, Electric Hotel, Gravity Fatigue (Sadler’s Wells); Drive and Live: La Bohème (ENO); The 1984 (Playhouse Theatre/ Broadway); The Antipodes, Sunset at the Villa Thalia, Statement of Regret (National Theatre); The Deep Blue Sea, The Chalk Garden, The House They Grew Up In (Chichester Festival Theatre); We Are Here (La Mama, New York); Allelujah! (Bridge Theatre); The Duchess of Malfi (RSC); Belleville (Donmar); Electric Counterpoint, Strapless (Royal Ballet); Green Snake (National Theatre of China); Macbeth (Broadway); Sunday in the Park with George (Wyndham’s)
Tom Gibbons (Sound Design)
Recent work includes Dear England (National Theatre, West End); Dead Man Walking (The Metropolitan Opera); Here We Are (The Shed, New York); Jesus Christ Superstar (DeLaMar Theatre, Amsterdam); Best of Enemies (Noël Coward Theatre, Young Vic); Grey House (Lyceum Theatre, Broadway); Good (West End); Hamlet, Oresteia, The Doctor (Park Avenue Armory, Almeida Theatre, West End); Animal Farm (UK tour); West Side Story, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Broadway); Cabaret (Göteborg Opera); Judas, Oedipus, The Doctor (International Theatre Amsterdam); The Antipodes, Home, I’m Darling, People, Places and Things (Winner for Best Sound Design, Olivier Awards 2016), Hedda Gabler, Sunset At The Villa Thalia, The Red Barn (National Theatre/West End); All About Eve (West End); Our Town (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); The Doctor, Wild Duck (Almeida/West End); Madness of King George III (Nottingham Playhouse); Hexenjagd (Theater Basel); Mr Burns, 1984 (Almeida/West End/Broadway); Fanny and Alexander, The Lorax (Old Vic); A View From the Bridge (Young Vic/West End/Broadway); Obsession (International Theatre Amsterdam, Barbican); Life of Galileo, Happy Days, A Season in the Congo, Disco Pigs (Young Vic); Les Miserables (Wermland Opera, Sweden); The Crucible (Walter Kerr Theatre, Broadway); Anna Karenina (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Moderate Soprano, Elephants (Hampstead Theatre); White Devil, As You Like It (RSC); Translations, Plenty (Sheffield Crucible); After Life, The Absence of War, Romeo & Juliet (Headlong); Lion Boy (Complicite); Venus in Fur (Theatre Royal Haymarket); Henry IV, Julius Caesar (Donmar, St Ann’s Brooklyn); The End of History, Pah La, The Woods, Love Love Love, (Royal Court).
Tal Yarden (Video Design)
London credits: Get Up, Stand Up, Anna X, My Brilliant Friend, Hamlet, Antigone, The Damned, Kings of War, The Fountainhead, Roman Tragedies, Lazarus. Broadway credits: Indecent, Network, The Waverly Gallery, Sunday in the Park with George, The Crucible; Off-Broadway & Regional credits: Becky Nurse of Salem, Grey Rock, King Lear, Distracted, Liberty City, The Misanthrope; A Walk on the Moon, Ocean Filibuster, Passing Strange, Frost/Nixon; Opera credits: Exterminating Angel, Between Worlds, Mahagonny, Salome, Brokeback Mountain, Macbeth. Video: Pat McGrath, Rick Owens, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg, James Brown, Patti Smith; Awards: Molière, Lucille Lortel, Noinations: Tony, Drama Desk, Hewes, Outer Critic.
INSTAGRAM: @OedipusWestEnd
TWITTER: @OedipusWestEnd
FACEBOOK: Oedipus West End
LISTINGS
OEDIPUS
Wyndham’s Theatre
4 October 2024 – 4 January 2025
Tickets from £25
Box Office: Oedipustheplay.com
General booking opens Wednesday 20 March at 10am.