Greek tragedy: do Hollywood stars have a place in the classics?

The trend for "plonking Hollywood stars into classics in the West End" has never looked more misconceived, said Robert Gore-Langton in The Mail on Sunday. Last week, revivals of two Sophocles dramas that have been shocking audiences for millennia opened in London.

'Horribly misguided'

In "Elektra", Brie Larson – best known for playing the superhero Captain Marvel – takes the title role, while Rami Malek (who starred in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), does the same in "Oedipus". This starry casting guaranteed publicity and early ticket sales; but alas, these two Greek tragedies have "never looked so bonkers – or less tragic". Sporting a buzz-cut and a punk T-shirt, Larson gives a "one-note grump of a performance". As Oedipus, Malek "stands about in slacks, looking spaced out and speaking in an American drawl that's even more wooden than Joe Biden's".

This "Elektra" is horribly "misguided", said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Larson is a "gifted" performer, but she's let down by Daniel Fish's "gimmicky", "avant-garde" production, which also leaves co-star Stockard Channing (as Clytemnestra) struggling. In this "silly" production, the avenging heroine is little more than a "raging bore", snarling into a handheld microphone.

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A 'hodgepodge mess'

Canadian poet Anne Carson's new translation is a redeeming feature, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer: caustic, forceful, and "filling the air with memorable images without losing the pulse of action". But the evening is baffling – more like a rehearsal room experiment than a show.

"Oedipus" fares better, said Clive Davis in The Times. Ella Hickson's adaptation lacks "poetic heft"; and Malek is stiff and unregal. But the staging, which features "mesmerising dance sequences" in place of a chorus, does conjure an "elemental", believable world.

Hickson presents the play as "a parable of religious delusion", said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph: the people think that only the gods can save them. It is an interesting take, in this era of "populist leadership and febrile ideological conviction", but nothing in this production is properly driven through; it is "a hodgepodge mess of a night".