It’s not
easy to bring to mind many plays of the vintage of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone which have a strong female
central character. I suppose it’s mainly for this reason that the play, first
performed in 1949, continues to endear itself to headstrong school girls. The
character of Antigone, as envisaged by Anouilh, is of a certain archetype that
has never really gone out of fashion – the tomboyish freethinker, resistant to
the established order, and familial counterpoint to a prettier, better behaved
sister. In this sense, Antigone remains
a play very much of the modern era, even if its themes of the inevitability of
fate, and honour at any cost, have less resonance in the early 21st
century than when Anouilh wrote it in Nazi-occupied France as a response to
resistance fighter Paul Collette’s remarkable acts of solitary defiance.
Sophocles’ rendering of the ancient
Greek legend of Antigone is, I suspect, less well-known now than Anouilh’s but
the story is the same – Antigone, aghast at the edict given by her uncle, Creon,
prohibiting proper burial rites for her dead brother Polynices, defies the law
by attempting to bury the body. Antigone knows that, if caught, she will be put
to death and, as the chorus reminds us in the play’s opening scene, it is never
in any doubt; Antigone is destined to die, and there are no means by which she
can circumvent her fate (in the end, she is immured – a lovely word for an
especially unpleasant form of execution).
The sisters, in Edwin Kemp Attrill’s
laudably minimalist production, are played by Sara Lange and Karen Burns.
Lange, as Antigone, gives an accomplished performance, restrained and
dignified, quietly rather than demonstratively tough. Burns is less successful
– nondescript, and at times difficult to hear – in what is, to be fair, a
fairly thankless role. Tom Cornwall, as Antigone’s doomed love interest Haemon,
makes even less of an impression, commendably earnest but never compelling. In
a play with only two good parts, it is not surprising that Antigone only soars during the scenes between the titular heroine
and Creon, who is played by Michael Baldwin. Baldwin – more slighted
backbencher than thundering king – is marvellously sinister, his lumpen,
lurching physicality consistent and disquieting. Genuine theatrical electricity
was generated during the scenes in which Creon confronts Antigone following her
arrest. Lange and Baldwin play off each other consummately, producing palpable
tension even if Lange can’t quite match Baldwin for sheer presence. I felt the
interval, which fell mid-scene just as the two were beginning to hit their
stride, was misjudged; it’s a testament to the quality of these two fine actors
that I did not want to leave the theatre.
Kemp Attrill’s production, with
lighting by Stephen Deane and sound by Rory Chenoweth, is crisp and clean, its
drab colour palette of mainly greys, blacks and creams an effective echo of
what the chorus tells us about tragedy, about the kind of play Antigone is: clean, restful, flawless. This
is a corporate world, not a kingly one. On opening night, I remarked to a
friend (and, as it happens, assistant director and production manager of Antigone) that this is amongst the most
technically proficient productions I have seen at the Theatre Guild. He seemed
surprised which is, perhaps, telling but I sincerely hope it may be a
trailblazer in this regard.
The pointed use of dolls (mentioned,
in Anouilh’s text, only in passing) is a surprisingly effective directorial
touch which works both to point up the play’s background and unfolding
narrative, and to suggest where the real power in this world lies – not in
individual freedoms, but in the arbitrary impositions of the state. We should
not fear, as perhaps Sophocles would have had us, the gods as envisaged in
antiquity, but our own gods, the unelected custodians of the modern economic
and political system: the Rupert Murdochs, the Paul Wolfowitzs, the Wall Street
Wolves of our own time. Make no mistake – Antigone
is, in Kemp Attrill’s hands, a thoroughly political play. When Creon, having
just put Antigone to death, blithely remarks that he has a cabinet meeting to
go to, a chill goes up the spine. It’s a chill that reminds us, to borrow
Hannah Arendt’s phrase, evil is banal, that there is nothing horrible about the
crimes of the state – just, perhaps, inevitable.
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