Brie Larson gives a fine west end debut

One thing is certain: The radically modernized revival of Sophocles from this evening with an Oscar winner American actor was better than the radically modernized revival of the Sophocles of the last night with an Oscar award winner of American actors.

Where the Rami Malek of the old Vic Oedipus Was over-conceptualized in Oblivion, US director Daniel Fish’s takeover Electra -What just opened a night later-a strange mix of chaotic randomness and underlying respect for the 2,500-year-old source material.

Marvel Star in her second stage ever, Marvel Star Brie Larson sets a very solid turn as a princess of the same name. We meet your electrical and live a Twilight existence that is impotent in a permanent impotent anger on her mother Klytamnestra (an acid existing existence) and an acidic foundation). Klytamnestra Lovers Aegisthus (Greg Hicks, unfortunate). Together they killed their father Agamemnon. Now Elektra wants her dead. The problem is that she is not really ready to do it herself: she is waiting for her brother Orestes to return from exile and get her hands dirty. In the meantime, Elektra stamps in a bikini kill t-shirt with a shaved head that exchanges with her mother, sister, Sardonian Witzel Chrysothemis (Marième Diouf)And an all-singing choir of white women. It is a difficult role to play that combines murderous anger with total inertia, and I would not say that Larson nailed it 100 percent. But her performance has a nihilistic charisma that works conceptually well, and she takes on this role that is not to blame.

Fish is a fascinating director who is largely unknown in Great Britain, beyond his cult resuscitation by Rodger & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Both this and this feel as if the director would try out many, many different things from scene to scene and only see what sticks are: we have singing Larson or speaking into various treated microphones; Patrick Vail’s Orestes, who describes his own obvious death in the style of a racing car commentator; A lengthy section that sings exclusively to the choir; A bit where many things are covered with black spray paint; A section in which a country song drowns out the entire dialogue; And let’s not forget the medium -sized blimp, which otherwise lurks in the corner of Jeremy Herberts for no obvious reason.

I never played that fish had lost sight of the game, even though we continuously threw ourselves on us. But where Oklahoma! I had an innate robustness that contained very famous and many known songs, to what extent the comparatively dark Electra can withstand the process of fish. He remains true to his essence. But I am not sure whether the average audience will appreciate this fully, and he does very little to the viewer to digest this strange piece in which the title character does not do anything … . Instead, fish offers frenetic tone shifts that do not cover history, but also do not make it clear.

I think the biggest problem for me was ultimately the use of Anne Carson’s poetic but strengthened verses adaptation from 2001 – there is an interrupted joke, but I am not convinced that the formality of the verse even helps the drama has. We get what the characters feel, but Carson’s tailor -made, shaped lines feel like a barrier for the actual emotional nuance. In particular, it is difficult to understand what Elektra feels in the end – what a problem is in a tragedy!

The subtext here is that none of the Crops of Celebrity Sophocles can really hold a candle for Robert Icke’s excellent youngest this week Oedipusin which emotional clarity was. Daniel Fish and Brie Larson’s Electra is a gratifying bone that made 75 minutes of punk rock theater with respect for the ancient Greek tradition. But it’s a show in which you see what you wanted instead of really feeling.