Entertainment

Sophomoric Sophocles

Even before Oedipus asks his daughter to identify a stranger and she calls him “some jerk-off,” you know you’re in for a wink-wink take on Sophocles.

And so it goes, more or less, for five hours in “These Seven Sicknesses,” which opened last night at the Flea Theater. The show tries hard to be hip: Oedipus (Jeff Ronan) and his buddy/rival Creon (Stephen Stout) look like members of a Joy Division cover band. Elektra (Betsy Lippitt) is a tough bleach-blond punkette in jarringly girlie purple underwear. The mandatory chorus is made up of nurses in crisp white uniforms.

But the attempts to make things more contemporary only turn “These Seven Sicknesses” into Sophocles for Dummies.

Adapter Sean Graney has sliced and diced the playwright’s seven surviving plays into one handy dinner-theater package — the $50 ticket includes a tasty meal and dessert. Director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar sets a quick pace, making the cast barrel through at a frantic clip.

But little works: The misguided show is strikingly tedious.

Whether it’s “Oedipus,” “Elektra” or “Antigone,” Sophocles’ tragedies are no picnic. Written in the fifth century BC, they feature larger-than-life characters such as warriors, kings, queens and the occasional god or sphinx, not to mention incest, suicide and matricide. Their cosmic scale makes the characters struggle vainly against a predetermined fate. Unlike warnings about imminent Armageddon, dire prophecies pan out.

Here, we never get any inkling of this grandeur. A big problem is that the 38-strong cast is drawn from the Flea’s resident — and unpaid — company, the Bats, most of whom are in their 20s. And so we have wholesome, earnest actors gamely try to play rulers tormented by colossal issues. Sorry, don’t buy it — this shouldn’t be “Gossip Girl” in Thebes.

The best parts of the evening are when the nurses and an orderly (Will Turner) beautifully harmonize on tunes ranging from Coldplay’s “Everything’s Not Lost” to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Find the Cost of Freedom” and, finally, “The Wayfaring Stranger.”

The director has a heavy hand with the gore: The flowing blood seems to wake the audience almost as much as the breaks. During those, the hardworking cast serves the food — unfortunately reminding us of the traditional actor/waiter gig — and amiably chats with theatergoers. Forced conviviality and tragedy? No wonder the show doesn’t work.