The Other Place (Zeldin) Off-Broadway Reviews

“The Other Place” is a far looser adaptation and update. Beyond the too cute name changes — Annie/Antigone, Chris/Creon, Erica/Eurydice and the soothsayer Terry/Tiresias (Jerry Killick) — “The Other Place” plays like an improv exercise in which actors, who are only vaguely familiar with the Sophocles classic, are put on a stage with an urn full of ashes and directed, “To now gives us ‘Antigone.’”

Yet The Other Place, like many other attempts to modernize the Greeks, has a hole where the ancient gods, fates and rituals should be. Compared to Antigone’s insistence on honoring the dead, Annie’s protest has risibly low stakes; just as an Oedipus without oracles is reduced to the story of a preposterously unlikely and monstrous bummer, Antigone without deeply rooted righteous principles is just the story of a mentally ill woman who can’t give up her father’s ghost. Compensatorily, Zeldin fills out the story with a theme of sexual transgression that emerges too suddenly to deliver the neomythic familial drama of, say, A View from the Bridge, and whose denouement is triggered by a stage convention—the coupling of an implausible indiscretion and an inopportune entrance—that is less classical than cliché.

It is not inaccurate to call “The Other Place” taut and tense, a showcase for D’Arcy’s embodiment of stress and Menzie’s eventual explosive expression of guilt, aided by the insistence of Yannis Philippakis’ electronic score and the persistence Josh Anio Grigg’s sound design (which includes endless startling pings from cell phone messages.). But Zeldin’s skill as a director in dramatizing the everyday is on display in the performances of the other cast members, especially Lee Braithwaite as the stepson Leni, who even in his smallest and seemingly most random of movement reveal his place in the hierarchy of the family.

You can feel playwright Alexander Zeldin’s struggling with his new play “inspired by” by Sophocles’ Antigone. Yes, The Other Place borrows an important plot element from that ancient Greek tragedy, namely a conflict revolving around the conflict over where to place someone’s remains. And just to keep us on our toes, it throws in another significant narrative device from Sophocles, one that won’t be revealed here. Ultimately, however, The Other Place feels like yet another dysfunctional family drama, albeit one blown up to semi-mystical proportions. None of it feels particularly convincing, but thanks to the superb performances and the playwright’s riveting staging you’re mesmerized for every one of its concise 80 minutes.