F*cked Up Families: OEDIPUS & THE BURNING CAULDRON OF FIERY FIRE — Review

Right in time for the holidays, two families that are probably worse off than yours!

Robert Icke is one of our best and most exciting theatrical talents, full stop. Any announcement of new work from the writer-director, known stateside lately for his incendiary updates of the Oresteia, Hamlet and The Doctor (from Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi), are reason enough to immediately secure at least one round of tickets. So it’s curious that he’s hit a wall with Sophocles’ Oedipus. There’s still the baseline level of competence for which he’s come to be known – a sleek, glass-paneled modernist set by Hildegard Bechtler; laser-sharp performances, this time led by the phenomenal pairing of Mark Strong and Lesley Manville – that is leagues above most others’ hopes for excellence. But without the profound insight (modern and timeless) he’s excavated from those other works, there’s little to generate the same theatrical electricity.

Maybe it’s because, more than other Greek texts, Oedipus is something of a one-trick pony; a revelation waiting to happen. Icke is aware of this, writing in his script’s introduction (which I purchased sight-unseen because, again, I stan) that, “The tradition of Greek tragedy was to take a known story and re-tell it, changing it, re-making it to meet the present moment.” This he does with his usual cleverness, setting the tale on election night and turning Oedipus into an Obama-esque charismatic campaigning on hope, and the promise to solve the cold-case murder of his predecessor (and his wife Jocanda’s first husband).

That might not be the smartest investigation to open, as the blind prophet Teiresias (Samuel Brewer) sneaks into Oedipus’ office to cryptically suggest. It’s a nice Classical touch to keep the soothsayer, but it introduces a dramaturgical pitfall: In order to hold interest in a story whose surprises we already know, you either line up those dominoes and have a hell of a time toppling them, or you seek ways of making them fall that reveal fresh, new patterns. Icke’s Oresteia (sorry, I just think it might be the best play of the century) managed both while leaning harder into the latter route; reframing its entire chain of events as a tribunal judging its main character’s soul, and our own sense of right and wrong, every step of the way. His Oedipus, while glowing with his usual whip-smart language, doesn’t have much fun in the toppling. Each domino falls (“I killed who?! You’re my what?”) with complete earnestness, and without broader examination, even though we’d been tipped off by an earlier character and our own cultural literacy. There’s simply no tension. Thankfully, there’s little of that, too, in wondering whether Icke’s next project – his every project – will be worthy of appraisal. And if you see me soon, front row, at Oedipus, it’s because there are far worse places to be than at a Robert Icke production, or in the company of Strong and Manville.

Tension, meanwhile, is the driving force behind Anne Washburn’s latest play, The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire, sometimes – but not for long – to a frustrating degree. Directed by Steve Cosson, this commune-cult story set in the California desert reminded me of those mid-century B-movies like The Velvet Vampire or Manos: The Hands of Fate, which managed to posit New Age hippieism as (1) an abject terror, (2) a horrifying threat to normal values and, (3) maybe the way to go?

It begins with the death (or is it?) of one of the commune’s child members and how the leader’s decision to deal with this (or did he?) impacts the group’s future. Thomas (Bruce McKenzie), its head, is crunchy and surface-level agreeable. His partner (or is she?) Mari (Marianne Rendón), is not on the same page as him, but enjoys the quieter life they’ve built for themselves, far from the rest of the world’s oppressive structures. But soon the dead kid’s older brother (Tom Pecinka, as the two of them) shows up demanding answers, and finds some sideways ones in the homespun play their children have been workshopping.

That’s where the titular cauldron is introduced, in a fabulous display of old-school showmanship that brings out the best of Andrew Boyce’s scenic design and Monkey Boys Production’s puppets. (The puppets include a giggling school of “fire fish” that should, by all means, become next Halloween’s Niche Gay Costume.)

Fiery Fire is a purposefully evasive work, full of mysteries I’m not sure Washburn has entirely figured out – nor should she. Like the commune it portrays, it’s utopian, derivative, delusional and brilliant. Its ensemble boasts sterling turns from Bobby Moreno, Bartley Booz, Cricket Brown, Donnetta Lavinia Grays and Jeff Biehl, all of whom fill in this far-out community struggling to make sense of a world built for and without us. For all its opaqueness, the piece is incredibly propulsive and charged with the type of post-apocalyptic that feels just right – pre, or mid, apocalypse.

Oedipus is in performance through February 8, 2026 at Studio 54 on West 54th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

‍The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire is in performance through December 7, 2025 at the Vineyard Theatre on East 15th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.