Whether you’ve seen Oedipus—Sophocles’ classic Greek tragedy—or not, I bet you know the main story beats: A man unwittingly murders his father and beds his mother, and then claws his own eyes out from grief and horror. The play has been shocking and engaging audiences for millennia and has become so embedded in our collective psyches that Freud even used it to describe what he said is a “primordial urge and fear” we all share.
And now, the story is back on Broadway, via a new modern adaptation by Robert Icke, a director-playwright who’s spent much of his Olivier-winning career reimagining ancient dramas for the modern age. Oedipus opened last month at Studio 54, where it runs until February 8, 2026. In Icke’s take, King Oedipus of Thebes has become a present-day politician, and we have been transported to his war room on election night. Nearly his entire family is there—and he, of course, does not know just how close he is to some of them...READ MORE