"The Eyes Have It: The Porters of Hellsgate's Oedipus," by Steven Leigh Morris. LA WEEKLY, 3/4/2011.

Jamey Hecht's new translation of Oedipus the King just opened at North Hollywood's Sherry Theatre in a lucid, traditional rendition called Oedipus the Tyrant, presented by the Porters of Hellsgate and directed by Thomas Bigley. The Porters of Hellgate opt for a staid togas-and-sandals approach, with Jessica Pasternak's silky earth-tone costumes. A female chorus recites in unison Sophocles' meditations on the action, sometimes performing to Taylor Fisher's choreography of arms flung from torsos simultaneously, or the percussive effect of punctuating a line with a group stamp of the foot or slap of the palm. Combine that with Nicholas Neidorf's subtly brooding sound design and original compositions, plus a performance style that gets to the translation's formality with an emotional spontaneity and truthfulness, and what transpires is absorbing. This is remarkable, given the dangers lurking in the artifice---the symmetry of Bigley's staging and Fisher's art design, the inherent possibilities of overacting and self-parody. These dangers almost never become manifest to choke this earnest endeavor. 

In the title role, the youthful Charles Pasternak makes for a sometimes relaxed sometimes tempestuous monarch, with a charm that makes it apparent how he could have wandered into Thebes after a road-rage incident and stolen the heart of Queen Jocasta (the powerful Kate O'Toole). Dylan Vigus has a thunderous presence as the Priest who opens the play, and Hecht cuts plausible distinctions between his jaded Teiresias and his callow Messenger. The strongest aspect, which should please translator Hecht no end, is the commanding articulation of the poetical prose.