Antigone

There’s an old adage – “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Certainly one could argue that there’s a case for “fixing” a 2,500 year old Greek tragedy to make it more relevant to a current audience. But is this version by Jane Montgomery Griffiths the answer? Methinks not!

The struggle between Antigone, who wants to bury her slain brother, and her uncle King Creon, who will uphold the law at all costs, had delicious undertones. Both were right – and both wrong, intractable. Integrity or arrogance? What drives the power struggle between them? That’s the question we are asked.

Griffiths has decided to come down entirely on the side of Antigone in this version. As an actress, Griffiths is a skilled and powerful presence on any stage. However, in making Creon Antigone’s Aunt, rather than uncle, she has totally shifted the focus of the play. Sophocles original may have been the first feminist manifesto – with Antigone prepared to go against all tradition and any obstacle for her rights, and misogynistic Creon afraid of a letting a woman wield any power. Are those struggles between the sexes now antiquated? Certainly not. In making the gender switch what we have instead is the abstract theme of power (politics) versus humanity; but there’s also a rather nasty sense of how women, rather than supporting each other, are prepared to back-stab those closest to them to get what they want. Creon says ‘It’s not personal, it’s just politics,, the writer missing the point that if Creon is a female then it SHOULD be personal, at least on a subtextual level. Sophocles’ original is far more nuanced than Griffiths’ new version, which embraces its themes while reducing its protagonist and antagonist to 2D cutouts. There’s more depth of character in a soap opera than we have here. And while the politics in general are extraordinarily relevant in current times, they have no conduit unless it’s through characters we are connected to. The idea of the Greek chorus might be antiquated, but at least that informed on both a practical and abstract level and negated the need for any exposition, which creeps in from time to time to the detriment of the storytelling.

Director Adena Jacobs has some stunning ideas (the river Styx literally flooding the stage, Antigone’s death song) but ultimately the production wavers between mesmerising pretension and yawning bathos.

Emily Milledge – still only 21 yet showing the promise of true greatness – struggles with the physical restrictions the Director imposes (she’s carried or lying down for practically all of the play) yet still manages to wound us with her pain, both physical and emotional. Jane Montgomery Griffiths is commanding except when running around the perimeters of the stage for no apparent reason (is she running away from the inevitability of her decision? I’m usually so good with symbolism), or pulling down pantyhose (that one escapes me too, and many of the audience  it seems, since there were titters at every occasion. Someone behind me murmured “Don’t get your panti-hose in a knot”.

The remaining cast are quite restricted but adequate and the Sisters Hayes have provided an interesting set of an elevated shipping container with a staircase and a giant hook suspended on a rope. The true wonder is the gentle (at first) appearance of the river….yes, real water, which becomes a flood of blood. But, again, it’s to the detriment of the text that what we remember most is a visual effect. Paul Jackson’s lighting is atmospheric and Jethro Woodward’s sound-scape is impressive, the reverb on Creon’s public microphone suitably suggesting the presence of crowds we can’t see.

I always think that a noble failure is preferable to a mediocre success, but the nobility here is debatable. All I could think of as I left the theatre was “Why?”

Coral Drouyn

Photographer: Pia Johnson.