Antigone

Synopsis

Two brothers, Polyneikes and Eteocles, fight for the crown of Thebes. They kill each other. The rule is strict and clear: whoever dares to bury Polyneikes will be punished with death. Antigone cannot accept the laws that leave one of her brothers unburied and humiliated. State against Ideals, a young woman against a monarch, the whole town, us, inside the arena.

Jodie Whittaker plays Antigone and Christopher Eccleston, Creon.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 31 May 2012

Early in Polly Findlay’s superb new staging of Sophocles’ Antigone in the Olivier Theatre, the chorus, or office staff, of the new head of state, Creon, gather round a television to see what’s happening outside. Instantly we think of that photograph of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other White House officials glued to the small screen video link during the final raid on Osama bin Laden’s hide-out.

It’s just one way of registering the immediacy of the play, but there is no clumsy emphasis on modern application, nor is there any messing about with the late Don Taylor’s fine and muscular translation (which dates from a BBC television production of 1986).

Creon, played with understated, chilling authority and a Lancastrian accent by Christopher Eccleston, is keen to maintain control after a period of disastrous civil war.

His niece, Antigone, wants to bury her dead brother, the rebel Polynices, b...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 20 June 2012:

Polly Findlay's production of Antigone is set in a modern day Thebes, located somewhere in the Pennines judging by the two main actors retaining their own accents. Cristopher Eccleston is characteristically intense as Creon, the ruler determined to push forward with an unpopular strategy in the face of mounting dissent. Jodie Wnittaker's Antigone is a very down-to-earth pragmatist, accepting her fate as the consequence of loyalty for her unburied brother and there is a superb cameo from Jamie Ballard as the blind propher Teiresias. The production moves at terrific pace for 90 minutes but does suffer from a couple of problems: Antigone herself only features in three scenes and the horrific climax breaks the rule of show don't tell as the deaths of Antigone and Haemon are communicated by a messenger (as in Phaedra). However this should not detract from a production which brilliantly conveys the continuing relevance of ancient Greek drama....

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