Lesley Manville’s Jocasta monologue silences Broadway audiences

Lesley Manville is leaving audiences spellbound in Robert Icke’s retelling of Oedipus at Studio 54 on Broadway, the New York Times reported on Jan. 31, 2026. The paper describes a silence so profound it “seems to vibrate” as Manville’s Jocasta delivers a monologue about three-quarters into the play; the pause can last a full dozen minutes, though the article says its exact duration is hard to quantify.

A large digital clock onstage counts down an election night in an unspecified, troubled nation as Mark Strong’s Oedipus listens across the stage. Much of the effect, the article says, comes from simple staging and technical choices: a subtle lighting change, almost unconscious musical underscoring, and the decision to keep Manville nearly immobile in a chair so the audience is drawn into a close-up.

Icke also described the speech as “a scene with five different people, but they’re all you.” The monologue gives Jocasta a personal backstory written by Icke: at 13 she was seduced by the country’s leader, Laius, then in his 50s, became pregnant, later married him at 17, and delivered the child secretly before it was taken from her.

The article says the speech is fragmented, full of denial, and that Manville has never performed it without crying; she called the language and story “wrecking” each night.

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