Antigone

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. How do you get a diamond out of a stone? ‘I was born to love, not hate’, states Antigone. And there is always a cost for it.

Jean Anouilh’s version of this timeless story is one of the greatest French plays of the 20th Century – a brilliantly theatrical treatment of Antigone’s passionate and fatal determination to give a proper burial to her fallen brother in defiance of state authority. Written in Nazi-occupied France in 1944, the play’s rich web of political, moral and psychological themes could hardly be more pertinent today.