Spending your evening watching a Sophoclean tragedy unfurl is no light undertaking. As an audience member, you commit yourself to the inevitable despair that accompanies all of the seemingly avoidable mistakes, guaranteed gore, and a lot of death. EUTC’s vibrant production of Antigone, fittingly staged in a courtroom of sorts, breathes life into this tale of justice.
The show follows Antigone (Bibi Berliner Benson), who defies King Creon’s decree and chooses to bury her fallen brother Polynices. We enter a world fraught with conflict between moral duty and political power.
Clad in a striking red that distinguishes our fiery heroine from the monochrome chorus of Thebes, Benson flickers between great anguish and intense rage, capturing the mania of a woman at her wits end in an overbearingly patriarchal society – in just one of the chauvinistic moments of the play, Creon deflates a tense exchange between Antigone and Ismene (Cameron Herring) with his dismissive remark that “these women are neurotic.”
Rufus Goodman is remarkable as Creon, embodying both the smooth-talking charisma of a modern-day politician and the growing doubt that plagues him as the play continues towards its tragic end. Indeed, much of the emotional weight of the play lies in the very capable hands of the outstanding supporting cast, with standout performances from magnetic newcomer Theodore Perrott, providing some much-appreciated levity as the Soldier during the more gruelling moments of the play, and Reuben Stickland as Haemon, who, with a certain gravitas, becomes the Mark Anthony to his father’s Brutus, seizing the attention of both the onlooking chorus and the audience as he delivers the critical line of the play: that “when the state becomes one man, it is no longer a state.”
Under the confident direction of Dan J. Bryant and Georgia Thomas, the production’s most striking choice is their use of the Greek chorus, whose haunting song (initially hesitant, but recovering throughout) delicately punctuates each wretched scene as they visually represent the shifting balance of morality in the courtroom, reacting to Creon’s misfires and Tiresias’ apocalyptic warnings (a captivating Hal Hobson).
Imaginative and enthralling, Antigone leaves us questioning justice itself. In this courtroom, there are no winners. With the chorus as our jury, it seems that we are not judges, but mere witnesses of fate.
Image courtesy of Emily Sharp @emilyrosesharp