It is a glorious gospel concert beneath the darkening skies along the Hudson River, and that’s all one needs to know to thrill at “Gospel at Colonus.” But the experience is deepened by its history – its two histories, one going back millennia, the other decades. In 1983, Lee Breuer, the avant-garde theater artist who co-founded Mabou Mines, collaborated with the brilliantly eclectic composer Bob Telson on this musical retelling of Sophocles’ “Oedipus at Colonus,” transposing the tragedy to an African-American Pentecostal church service. It debuted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and has been performed somewhere in the world ever since – including a two-month run on Broadway in 1988, and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park in 2018, featuring some of the original cast members.

At ninety minutes with no intermission, the version at Little Island is an hour shorter than the Public Theater’s, and features a new generation of talent. Several are younger than the musical, such as two soloists, opera singer Davóne Tines as Oedipus and the R&B singer and performance artist known professionally as serpentwithfeet.

So is the production’s director, Shayok Misha Chowdhury. If you don’t know his name yet, you should, and you will: The author of the plays Public Obscenities and Rheology, he is also the director this season of Prince Faggot.

But it’s misleading to single out individuals in a production in which everybody gets their turn to stand out, and all also stand out together. Tines is actually one of four performers in the cast who take on the role of Oedipus, sometimes together. 

 The members of this church, most of them dressed by costume designer Montana Levi Blanco in outfits that could be both Ancient Greek togas and Brooklyn church robes, include an actual Flatbush based gospel singing ensemble known as James Hall’s Worship & Praise, who serve as both church chorus and traditional Greek chorus.

“Welcome, brothers and sisters, I take as my text this evening the Book of Oedipus,” the preacher (a mesmerizing  Stephanie Berry) greets us, a role originally called the Messenger, and first portrayed by a then little-known Morgan Freeman.  The preacher establishes from the get-go a connection between Greek tragedy and the theology, or at least the drama, of the Black Christian Church.

By presenting the story of “Oedipus at Colonus” as a church service, “Gospel at Colonus” enlivens the second play of Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy, which is the least familiar (and normally the least dramatically engaging) of the three. In the first play, “Oedipus Rex,” Oedipus gouges out his eyes upon learning of the horror of his having fulfilled the prophecy of killing his father and bedding his mother. In the third, “Antigone,” Oedipus’ daughter defies King Creon in order to bury her brother, one of Oedipus’s two dead sons.

In Breuer’s adaptation of Sophocles’ second play, Antigone (Samantha Howard), an evangelist, leads her father to Colonus, a holy place, where he’s welcomed by Theseus (Kim Burrell, who’s been turned from a king into a pastor in the adaptation — and from male to female in this production.) Creon, once a king now a deacon (Kevin Bond) urges him home: “Poor Oedipus. Come home.Your people summon you.” But Creon is being dishonest; he is seeking power, and will do what he must to attain it, including kidnapping Oedipus’ daughter Ismene (Ayana George Jackson, who stands apart from the others rather spectacularly in a tower, as if imprisoned.)

“Gospel at Colonus” doesn’t end happily, exactly, but Oedipus has come to Colonus seeking redemption, and there, in a rousing series of musical numbers that make the audience stand up and sway, he finally finds it.

Although Breuer died in 2021 at the age of 83, I suspect he would see parallels between the current-day dynamics in America, and those facing Oedipus, and side with Theseus, who says about Oedipus:

I too was an exile. Therefore
No wanderer shall come to me
As he has done, and be denied.

Gospel at Colonus
The Amph at Little Island through July 26
Running time: 90 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $25
Conceived and adapted from Sophocles  by Lee Breuer
Original music and adapted lyrics by Bob Telson
Directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury
Co-music direction by Dionne McClain-Freeney and James Hall, associate direction by Sam Morreale, scenic design by David Zinn, costume design by Montana Levi Blanco, lighting design by Stacey Derosier, sound design by Garth MacAleavey, hair & wig design by Cookie Jordan, and Kirk Cambridge-del Peche as makeup consultant.
Cast: Davóne Tines as singer Oedipus, Kim Burrell as Theseus, serpentwithfeet as Friend, Stephanie Berry as preacher, Kevin Bond as Creon, Samantha Howard as Evangelist Antigone, Ayanna George Jackson as singer Ismene, Brandon Michael Nase as Balladeer,John-Michael Reese as testifier Polyneices, and Frank Senior as singer Oedipus. Members from James Hall’s Worship & Praise based in Flatbush collectively represent the traditional Greek chorus: Trenise Y. Bullock, Schanel Crawford, Jaquetta Fayton, Angie Goshea, Robyn McLeod, Niyoka Morgan, TJ Riddick, Vischon Robinson, Lenny VanCooten, Eugene Marcus Walker, and Darlene Nikki Washington.

Photos by Julieta Cervantes