Taking the Oedipus

Aometimes what seems like a curse can be a blessing in disguise. The folks at the Pan Pan theatre company were disappointed that their latest production Oedipus Loves You didn’t make it into the current Dublin Theatre Festival.

So says Aideen Cosgrove, its co-Artistic Director and Lighting Designer. But as soon as she hears the show is getting an entire column in hotpress rather than being lost in the maze of plays staged as part of the Festival, she’s blissed!
Then again, apart from the fact that the Oedipus Loves You updates the myth of Oedipus and relocates it to contemporary suburbia, and also takes a humorous look at Freud’s reappropriation of that myth, this play also features its very own rock band who play live, Gordon Is A Mime.
And that band, performing original music written for this production by former Into Paradise member Jim Eadie, includes five of the actors in the play – Ruth Negga, Ned Dennehy, Karl Shiels, Gina Moxley and Dylan Tighe. But first let’s presume there is at least one reader of hotpress out there who is unfamiliar with the Greek myth of Oedipus Rex. What’s it all about?
“Oedipus killed his father and married his mother all without knowing it,” says Aideen. “Then Freud subsequently referred to the fact that all men really desire their mother and are looking for their mother in a sexual partner and he called this the Oedipus Complex. So what we’ve done is look at psychoanalytical themes in suburbia and in the family. It’s like everything is so embarrassing and horrible in your family and this therapist comes in and gives the whole family therapy to try sort it out. And in the process of the therapy our character of Oedipus finds out that he has killed his father and married his mother. So it is the old story but it is very, very, very funny.”
Aideen also insists the music in Oedipus is an integral part part of the production.
“They rehearse in the garden, their guitars are there and the drum-kit is in the bedroom and in the middle of all this family chaos they play their music,” she says.
More than that, as so often happens, music helps the protagonists to express their silence and angst.
“Gavin Quinn and Simon Doyle write the actual play and they just love exploring the concept of suburbia, and part of the exploration is the role music plays in that” Aideen explains.
“Oedipus was trapped in his fate, as we all are, and for a lot of people suburbia seems like their only fate, but music can be an escape from that. It is in this play. In the old myth there was a plague in the land, but in the play the plague is inertia and a lack of motivation.
“People are asking themselves, ‘What is my life all about?’ which are questions a lot of your readers in hotpress might have. And the music really is integral in relation to our vision of suburbia. They want to be rock stars, they want to escape from it all and they believe this is their only way. And Jim Eadie’s music is rootsy, folky and rock... and we do 'Freebird' in Greek!”
Despite the failure to make it into the Dublin Theatre Festival, Oedipus Loves You is not only opening in Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre on October 9, it’s also already secured touring dates outside Ireland, a fact that, not surprisingly, again delights Aideen Cosgrove.
“We are touring Canada in the early part of next year, we’ve got that far at least” she says. “And we are trying to set up venues in places like New York and London. But a lot of the actors have film and television commitments. Yet as for this production I don’t think the audience we have in mind for this play really care whether we are part of the Dublin Theatre Festival or not. We had originally wanted to be in the festival, but when that didn’t work out we realised we had already booked our venue so we’ve decided to go ahead with the show anyway. And even though, in ways, we are fighting all the publicity shows in the festival are getting, I still believe an audience will make its own way to Oedipus Loves You. Especially after this article in hotpress!”