THE SEVEN

A bold contemporary take on Sophocles is no easy feat with today’s TV attention-spanned audiences, but La Jolla Playhouse is one of the country’s cutting-edge theatres and goes where no one else dares to go and as theatre-goers we are the lucky reciprients of it’s audacity with THE SEVEN, a hip-hop take on Sophocles’ Greek tragedy ‘Seven Against Thebes’, a continuation of the Oedipus tragedy and his ill-fated sons.

Told in Greek tragedy chorus style, the poetics of hip-hop makes this a perfect match and luckily the musical style is improved from hip-hops usual immature lyrics here telling the story while using todays vernacular.

The cast are all first rate singer/dancers that obviously are enjoying ‘Spring Awakening’s Bill T. Jone’s hip-hop choregraphy. Energy abounds.

The only crtitcism is that the lighting doesn’t equal the inventivesness of the rest of the show and the direction seems to be on one level the whole time. But this is cutting edge powerful innovative theatre that The La Jolla Playhouse seems alone in advancing.