Stage: Oedipus the King, Mama!

Falcon Theatre

Los Angeles

(818) 955-8101

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Who knew Elvis and Oedipus had so much in common? said Bob Verini in Variety. The Los Angeles–based Troubadour Theater Company, known for combining pop music and classical tales in musical spoofs such as As U2 Like It and It’s a Stevie Wonderful Life, returns with a “dazzling” 90-minute take on Sophocles’ tragedy, set to songs popularized by Elvis Presley. The vocal stylings of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, with their “frank carnality, maudlin sentiment, and anguished self-doubt,” turn out to be “perfectly suited to the King of Thebes.” Director and lead actor Matt Walker delights as the Elvis-Oedipus hybrid, decked out in a white jumpsuit and imploring his mother, Jocasta, to “Love Me Tender.”

The tragic source material sometimes seems at odds with the attempt to create an up-tempo musical comedy, said F. Kathleen Foley in the Los Angeles Times. But once “Oedipus-Elvis learns that he has murdered his daddy and married his mama, the show takes off like a skyrocket.” Walker is terrifically funny in the lead, staggering around the stage “like a drunken man with one leg in a ditch.” In flashback sequences, James Snyder, who played the lead in Broadway’s Cry-Baby, is an “appropriately hunky young Elvis with a voice to match.” And the “divinely droll” Beth Kennedy practically steals the show as Jocasta, done up like an ancient Greek version of Tammy Wynette.

The side-splitting score makes fresh use of “Elvis’ most renowned songs,” said Jonas Schwartz in Theatermania.com. Hits such as “Suspicious Minds” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” are easily bent to suit the Freudian tale. The humor mostly tends toward the absurd, but some of the jokes “are so black and cruel that you’ll be ashamed for laughing.” Oedipus’ pierced ankles, for instance, are used to explain Elvis’ swaggering and gyrations, while the theme to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? accompanies Oedipus’ attempt to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. It’s enough to leave audiences “all shook up” with laughter.