Oedipus , created by Robert Icke after Sophocles. Mark Strong (Oedipus) and Lesley Manville (Jocasta). Photo: Julieta Cervantes The British directing star Robert Icke specializes in contemporary adaptations of classics. He writes and directs them, proudly insisting that they only deserve attention if they hold their own as current plays. No foreknowledge of the originals should be needed. “When you deliver a classic,” he says, “your primary responsibility is to try and catch

Archduke by Rajiv Joseph, directed by Darko Tresnjak, Laura Pels Theatre. L to R: Patrick Page, Jason Sanchez, Adrien Rolet, Jake Berne, Kristine Nielsen. Photo: Joan Marcus. The farcical premise of Rajiv Joseph’s play Archduke —just opened at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre—is that the young men who sparked World War I by assassinating the Archduke Franz Ferdinand were actually starving, terminally ill consumptives bribed and duped into becoming suicidal terrorists. The

Endgame by Samuel Beckett, directed by Garry Hynes. A Druid Theatre production at the Irish Arts Center. Set by Francis O'Connor. Photo: Ros Kavanagh. With a depressingly vacuous, celebrity-circus Waiting for Godot   sucking up so much oxygen on Broadway, it’s a delight and relief to see Samuel Beckett produced at the Irish Arts Center by gifted and steely artists with proven talent at plumbing his work. The indomitable Garry Hynes, a Tony-winner and leader of Galway’s Druid