There are some actors that I would pay to hear read out the bus timetable, and Mark Strong is top of that list. So when I heard that he was playing opposite Lesley Manville in a modern reworking of Oedipus Rex, I thought ‘yes please’.

The play reimagines Oedipus as a modern-day politician, on the eve of an election victory. He is committed to full transparency, unaware of what scuttles beneath the rocks he determines to turn over – though fans of Sophocles’ original play, Freudian psychoanalysis, or The End by The Doors will be able to guess. The revelatory climax of the play is emphatic and electric, and grips like a vice. It’s fab. See it, see it, see it (but don’t take Grandma).

We might look at Oedipus’s mistake as a politician in pursuing full disclosure and think ‘chance would be a fine thing’. Concealment is safer: fessing up to wrong leads to public shame. Like gleeful tricoteuses, we delight in seeing those in power being made to suffer for real or perceived transgressions, be it lockdown parties or misjudged Taylor Swift/Arsenal hospitality. Our sense of justice requires that someone pay. Burn the witch!

We’re less keen when the spotlight is shone on our own wrongdoing. In 2 Samuel 12 the prophet Nathan brings a case of injustice to King David, who angrily demands death for the perpetrator. Nathan explains that the villain of the piece is David himself, in taking Bathsheba for himself and engineering the death of her husband. David is undone. His journey from righteous indignation to wearing sackcloth and pleading for mercy is short.

Which of us would fancy having our past publicly replayed? 2 Corinthians 5:10 says that we must all appear before Christ’s judgment seat, so that each of us may receive what is due to us for the things we’ve done. Like a discomfiting divine VAR, our actions are replayed and assessed by Jesus to determine what happens next.

Classical Greek tragedy involves hubris, an overstepping of the mark, followed by nemesis, punishment. We know how many times and how seriously we have messed up and yet for Christians our hubris has resulted in nemesis for Christ at Calvary, not us. That undermines any self-righteous grandstanding on our part, and invites us to walk humbly and thankfully. Maybe it will give us pause when we next reach for the flaming torches and pitchforks.

Simon Martin
Simon volunteers in LICC’s fundraising team and enjoys finding cheap seats at the theatre.