Review: ANTIGONE at Antaeus

Contrary to what anybody may insist, a 2,500-year-old Greek play about the importance of staying true to one’s beliefs and of speaking truth to power still carries the force to slap an audience across the face, ring an alarm bell against fascism and yell – in no uncertain terms – wake... the [expletive]... up! The new production of Sophokles’s ANTIGONE produced by the Antaeus Theatre Company and directed by Andy Wolk, is lean, urgent, bloody and profoundly tragic. Linda Park, Tony Amendola and Ann Noble lead a cast of company veterans and relative Antaeus newcomers in a production that transports Sophokles’s work off the pages of a high school syllabus and directly across the threshold of our comfort zone. The costumes and language of Wolk’s production are contemporary; the themes equally so. Let the battle of wills and conscience commence!

The dilemma of our title heroine is age-old and familiar. Battling against each other on different sides of a war, Antigone's brothers Eteocles and Polynices have killed each other. Eteocles, who fought for the state, is given a hero’s burial. Polynices – deemed a traitor – is to be left unburied in the streets for dogs and carrion birds to devour. So decrees King Kreon (played by Tony Amendola) in one of his first acts of governance. This same Kreon, it will be remembered, is the uncle to Antigone and the two warring brothers, so this is also about family. With the republic still fragile and in need of stability, Kreon’s wife Eurydyke (Ann Noble) and son Haimon (Peter Mendoza) do their utmost to rally the populace behind the new ruler and his problematic decision. Antigone (Linda Park), also Haimon's fiancée, is having none of it. The order is immoral, an act against family and human decency, and she announces her decision to give her dishonored brother a proper burial no matter the consequences, which promise to be severe.

Now, bad decisions can sometimes come with wiggle room. Eurydike, Haimon and Antigone’s sister Ismene (Mildred Marie Langford) all try to find a path out of the problem – a public apology, an admission of guilt, some sort of face-saving gesture, but neither Kreon nor his stubborn niece will budge even an inch. And Antigone has right – and ultimately the will of the gods – on her side. With the summoning of Teiresias (Hamilton again), matters get even more urgent. Then they get bloody. 

ANTIGONE being the conclusion of the Theban trilogy and every inch a tragedy, things will most decidedly not end with garlands and carousing at Antigone and Haimon’s nuptials, although the production’s final images suggest that a certain cosmic understanding may be reached in the afterlife. Perhaps that’s something.

In the present, however, things are pretty grim. A couple of fatigue-clad sentries (John Apicella and Kaci Hamilton) gossip as they patrol the court of Thebes, which set designer Sibyl Ann Wickersheimer renders as a series of small rooms and a jail cells off a central patio, the only area that seems to hold any light. That room holds a single office chair and desk at which Amendola’s Kreon (or sometimes his wife) stamps his orders. When she arrives on the scene, Park’s waif-like Antigone slips in like a ghost, clad in jeans and all but hidden underneath a hooded sweater. Costume Designer Angela Balogh Calin puts Noble’s Eurydike in blouses and pant suits, favoring the wife of a statesman. At one point, Eurydike removes a scarf to give to Antigone who – now jailed and wearing a shroud – is suffering the cold.

It is the women of this production who deliver both the steeliest and most affecting arguments. One moment, Park is a pilar of righteousness as she explains her actions to her uncle. A beat later, her eyes are welling up with tears as she reminds us that she will never know a man, never dance at her own wedding. Noble, so cutthroat Machiavellian in the title role of A Noise Within’s recent staging of RICHARD III, is a much different type of ruler here. Stateswoman, mother, diplomat, Noble weaves it all together giving Eurydike a forcefulness and majesty that this character doesn’t always convey.

Ultimately, ANTIGONE is as much the playing out of an argument to its conclusion as it is a character drama. In a climate of frequent No Kings protests and other frequent stands against autocracy, there will doubtless be those for whom a person with no power saying “I object” will seem eternally heroic. Others may find the same person a contemptible fool. Either way, Wolk and his Ataeuns give this ever fruitful discussion a crackling good 90 minutes of stage time. 

ANTIGONE continues through June 15 at 110 East Broadway, Glendale.

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