REVIEW: Oynak Kumpanya Presents Phaedra’nın Aşkı

Phaedra is a difficult tragedy to stage with a straight face. Given the stakes, her desire for her stepson Hippolytus can easily tip into the absurd. This is not a youthful Romeo and Juliet infatuation. Phaedra is a grown woman who should know better. Oynak Kumpanya’s production of Sarah Kane’s 1996 play Phaedra’s Love (Phaedra’nın Aşkı) leans directly into that absurdity. Through clowning masque and grotesque physicality, the company abandons psychological realism and relocates the drama in the realm of the crude id. These passions do not belong to the elegant neo-classical register. They erupt, exposed and unrefined. The result is a tragedy that is equal parts delightful and unsettling.

Three actors share the play’s full cast of characters. As this version centers primarily on Hippolytus, Mustafa Kemal Turhan plays him exclusively, while Beyza Nur Toydemir and Noyan Dokudan (who also translated the play) assume the remaining roles. Kane’s Hippolytus is a disaffected, cynical adolescent, and Turhan captures both his petulant youth and his agency within the plot. His immaturity sharpens the production’s central irony: a mature woman undone by her fixation on a boy determined to feel nothing at all.

Despite her better judgment and the pleas of her confidant, Phaedra sleeps with Hippolytus. Overcome with guilt, she takes her own life, accusing him of rape. When Theseus returns, he is outraged, and the tragedy accelerates toward its tragic conclusion: Hippolytus torn apart by a mob, achieving in death a grim flicker of existential clarity. Toydemir and Dokudan navigate their rapid character shifts with impressive clarity. However grotesque the motivations, the performers commit fully to each emotional turn. The acting is flamboyant but doesn't overwhelm the audience, no small feat in such an intimate space.

The production is turbulent, but never incoherent. Instead, it fuses Kane’s ferocity with Thomas Jolly’s queer punk aesthetic and the material ingenuity characteristic of Istanbul’s independent theatre scene. Burak Can Yiğit’s sound design, a pulsing undercurrent punctuated by a piercing tinnitus-like whistle, anchors the dramatic action. Cihan Alkan’s set of metal thrones with detachable bars allows the actors to reshape the stage dynamically, underscoring the production’s collaborative ethos. Sema Moda Evi’s black and sheer costumes, reminiscent of Chicago on Broadway, solidify the 1990s queer-punk aesthetic.

At its best, this intimate production evokes the raw immediacy one imagines in 1990s Seattle music venues or 1970s off-off Broadway in the Village: unapologetic expression, inventive resourcefulness, and artistic ambition matched by discipline. This isn’t Racine’s scene. It’s Kane’s.