Oedipus Enters His Elvis Era, With a Pompadour and Rhinestones

What happens when you take Sophocles’s most famous tragedy and mash it up with Elvis Presley hits, complete with a live band and sequined jumpsuits?

Audiences will find out this month when the Getty Villa Museum presents its 19th annual Outdoor Classical Theater production, Oedipus the King, Mama!

The Museum collaborated with Los Angeles’s Troubadour Theater Company to bring the classic story to glittering life, with performances Thursdays through Saturdays, through September 27.

The Troubies—and the Villa—are back

With the Villa’s doors reopening in July after significant fire restoration work, it’s a full circle moment.

The Troubadour Theater Company (affectionately called the “Troubies”) and the Getty Villa have a 16-year history of collaboration on successful dramatic adaptations, such as Haunted House Party, A Roman Comedy (an adaptation of Plautus’s Mostellaria). The Oedipus and Elvis mash-up was first conceived in 2009, when the troupe incubated the idea during a 10-day indoor workshop at the Villa.

“It’s so ironic,” says Villa production manager Ralph Flores. “We also collaborated with the Troubies for the first show we did after COVID. So, in a sense, they’re our go-to folks to bring people out of depression and tragedy.”

Matt Walker, founder of the Troubies and the actor playing Oedipus, finds humor in the situation too. When he learned that Oedipus the King, Mama! would be the first outdoor production at the Villa after the fires, he recalls something that Anna Woo, senior public programs manager at the Museum, had said: “What better than to have the Troubies come back after something globally catastrophic, or regionally catastrophic like the fires, to bring some light, joy, and laughs.”

Satirizing an ancient classic

Oedipus Rex, also known by its Greek title Oedipus Tyrannus, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that is believed to have been first performed circa 429 BCE. It follows Oedipus, king of Thebes, who sets out to escape the Oracle of Apollo’s prophecy—that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother—with devastating results.

Walker found that satirizing Oedipus offered surprising links to Presley’s life. “In the second scene, Oedipus says, ‘The murderer that you seek is living among you’—so, one of the first songs we used from Elvis was ‘The Devil in Disguise,’” he says. Walker also points out a scene containing flashbacks where Oedipus is warned by the oracle that things will not end up well for him. In the Troubies’ adaptation, they included a flash-forward with an older, heavier, hard-drinking version of Presley.

Oedipus and Presley had other things in common: Oedipus’s ankles were pierced together as an infant, which Walker says could explain his limp; Presley also reportedly had a limp. (King Laius, Oedipus’s father, ordered the action and his son’s abandonment so that he would die, thus preventing him from fulfilling the prophecy). Both men have also been portrayed as tragic icons—Oedipus as a doomed king who cannot escape the prophecy, and Presley as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” whose life was scored by heartbreak and a drug-induced downfall.

In terms of the setting, Walker points out that the Villa’s amphitheater, with its Corinthian columns, already harmonizes with Graceland’s facade. The Troubies will add other details, such as lion statues flanking the steps, to mimic the look of Presley’s home and further transport the audience to Memphis.

While these parallels exist, Walker stresses that the storytelling stays largely faithful to Sophocles’s original text. “The soul of the production is Oedipus, but gilded in Elvis. We didn’t take too many liberties with the story itself, though Sophocles did leave some breadcrumbs to create a bit of a murder mystery.”

Creating Graceland West

Costume designer Sharon McGunigle, who participated in the workshop mash-up 16 years ago, lost her home in the Eaton Fire in January 2025. She deliberated about whether to return for the second production of Oedipus, but signs kept popping up that she should. For one, the Troubies felt like family to her, and in the midst of her post-fire upheaval, it would be comforting to laugh with them. “I wanted work that would ground me in my new reality and feed my soul,” she says. She had also been planning a cross-country solo motorcycle trip in May, and Graceland was a prominent pit stop: inspiration was sure to strike.

McGunigle signed onto the production, cruised across the United States, and was floored by the tour of Presley’s Memphis home. While Graceland was at times triggering—“It was kind of hard to see a preserved house with all of this stuff that hadn’t burned in a fire,” she says—the tour gave her a strong overview of Presley’s life and a deep understanding of how and why his style evolved.

Bill Belew, “the man who dressed the king,” is credited for Presley’s evolution, and McGunigle noted the famous black leather jacket with its Napoleonic collar on display. She was fascinated about the evolution to jumpsuits—and all their embellishments—as a way to command presence on stage as audiences grew bigger and bigger.

At the Oedipus production, McGunigle says guests might see everything from togas to zoot suits to Western- and rockabilly-inspired getups. “It’s a fun puzzle to put together, and a true mash-up of Elvis’s different eras,” she says.

A spectacular setting

Much like McGunigle, Flores is excited for Oedipus to elicit some laughs. He says that the Villa’s last comedic retelling was LIZASTRATA, a Liza Minnelli–infused version of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. That was in 2021. “After three or four tragedies, people need a break,” he says. “We wanted to offer our audiences a giggle.”

Flores encourages guests to come early and visit the Villa’s galleries, so they can gain a greater understanding of the production’s characters and time period. “You can see the actual artifacts of the people these plays were written about,” he says.

Come showtime, guests can bring their food and drinks to their seats in the Villa’s classical Greek-inspired amphitheater. “It’s really a magical night,” says Flores. “And when the moon pops up behind the Museum, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, what a wondrous effect.’ It’s an entirely unique experience that I don’t believe exists anywhere else.”