Review: ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZON – ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2024 at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Friday 15th March 2024.

Swiss director, Milo Rau, and Belgium’s NTGent bring together a group of Brazilian and European actors, musicians, and indigenous activists to present Antigone in the Amazon, based on the Greek tragedy by Sophocles. This is the last part of Rau’s The Trilogy of Ancient Myths, following Orestes in Mosul (2019) and The New Gospel (2020). Like so many other projects, it was interrupted and delayed by COVID-19.

It has been produced in conjunction with The International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM), Festival d'Avignon, Romaeuropa Festival, Manchester International Festival, La Villette Parijs, Tandem - Scène nationale (Arras Douai), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Equinoxe Scène Nationale (Châteauroux), and Wiener Festwochen.

In the Greek play, Antigone is a Theban princess, a daughter of the incestuous marriage of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta, whom he married after killing his father, unaware of their relationship. She and her sister Ismene became his guides after he blinded himself, when he was made aware of what he had done. The sisters returned to Thebes after his death.

Antigone arrives to find that her brother, Polyneices, is attacking Thebes, defended by her other brother, Eteocles, and she tries, unsuccessfully, to intervene and bring peace. The brothers kill one another and her uncle, Creon, becomes king. Creon arranged a hero’s funeral for Eteocles but declared Polyneices a traitor and refused to allow his body to be buried. She defies Creon and secretly buries Polyneices, for which he condemns her to death, but she kills herself before the execution can be carried out. Haemon, the son of Creon and Eurydice, who was betrothed to Antigone, takes his own life when he hears that she has done so.

We are informed that “The play addresses themes of civil disobedience, morality, loyalty, authority, and gender.” These are traits common to both Antigone and this remarkable production.

Antigone in the Amazon is an elaborate, multidisciplinary performance, with three large screens together forming the backdrop to the live action, using film taken in the Brazilian state of Pará when they were there collaborating with Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), the world’s largest landless workers’ movement. The staging is completed by a collection of musical instruments to one side, a rack of clothes and a table and chairs to the other, and a large area of dark earth taking up the bulk of the stage.

A cast of four appears onstage: Pablo Casella, Frederico Araujo, Janne Desmet, and Joeri Happel, Desmet and Happel replacing Arne De Tremerie and Sara De Bosschere who were in the original cast. The rest of the cast appears on video: Kay Sara, Gracinha Donato, Célia Maracajà, Choir of militants of Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST), and an indigenous philospher, Ailton Krenak, as Tiresias, the mythical blind prophet of the god, Apollo. They use the term choir, where we would refer to a Greek chorus, because they do sing.

Sophocles wrote, in Antigone, “Much is monstrous, yet nothing is more monstrous than man.” This is repeated several times at the start of the performance and is a theme that runs throughout.

In a very Brechtian approach, the performers break in and out of the play, Antigone, to become storytellers, explaining how the work came about, talking of their time in Brazil, and explaining the history of the militant protests there. They take us back to what was expected to be the end of the Fascist dictatorship and the start of democracy, in a graphic re-enactment of the 1996 Eldorado do Carajás massacre when police opened fire on unarmed protestors, killing 21 and injuring many more. With the freedom to vote, Brazil had elected a Fascist dictator. Two of the survivors feature in the videos.

I am sure that nobody reading this needs to be told that the Amazon rainforests are being systematically destroyed by major organisations, with the consent and involvement of the government, entirely for commercial and personal profit that does not benefit the ordinary citizens in any way whatsoever, whilst completely ignoring all environmental issues and concerns. Cattle farming is the biggest cause of land clearing, but the growing of soy is the problem affecting the people involved in this production. This play addresses that disastrous state of affairs.

When Jair Bolsonaro came to power he announced that the Amazon was “open for business” and began dismantling all environmental protection. He opposed LGBTQ+ rights, and declared members of the MST  as terrorists, to be eradicated. He was beaten in the last election by left-wing politician and former activist, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has promised to reverse those changes. His efforts so far are encouraging. It is to be hoped that Lula can halt and, perhaps, reverse the destruction of the rainforest.

Echoing Trump, Bolsonaro claimed that the electronic voting machines were faulty and the election was rigged, refused to concede defeat, left for Florida before Lula’s inauguration, and now denies all knowledge of or involvement in the actions of his supporters who attacked Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential office. He is under investigation on many charges, including several that are criminal.

The live cast features Frederico Araujo as Polyneices, Janne Desmet as Haemon, and Joeri Happel as Creon, while Pablo Casella plays guitar, beautifully, and Melodica, as well as percussion, and adds to the narration. Over the course of the performance, they go from straightforward explanations of the process, to the heights of emotion when telling the history of the struggles in Brazil, and performing scenes from the tragedy of Antigone. There is not a moment wasted, not a second that doesn’t engage the audience, not a superfluous word or movement, not a video clip that doesn’t hit home. This has to be the most important work in this year’s Adelaide Festival.

This is a powerful and moving performance, fully deserving of the extended applause, standing ovation, and several curtain calls that it received.

Photography, Kurt van der Elst.

To post a comment, you must register and login.

Test and expand your Broadway knowledge with our new game - The Broadway Match-Up! How well do you know your Broadway casting trivia?	Play the Daily Game, explore current shows, and delve into past decades like the 2000s, 80s, and the Golden Age. Challenge your friends and see where you rank!
How well do you know your Tony Awards history? Take our never-ending quiz of nominations and winner history and challenge your friends.	Can you beat your friends? Play today’s daily Broadway word game, featuring a new theatrically inspired word or phrase every day!