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Reviews
Modern 'Antigone' is on point
By Mary Carole McCauley | Sun theater critic
October 25, 2007
Poor Antigone. The kid just can't catch a break.
Both her brothers have been killed in the big war between Argos and Thebes. One received a soldier's burial. The other was a deserter, and his corpse has been left to stink up the streets.
If Antigone digs a grave for him, she'll be buried alive - putting a whole new spin on "being grounded."
But, if she doesn't, the gods will flip their wigs, which is totally gross, because the Furies have snakes for hair. Ewww!
What's a girl to do?
Judith Malina's English translation of Bertolt Brecht's German interpretation of Sophocles' great tragedy (originally written in ancient Greek) is intended to make the play accessible to younger audiences. And this production by the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival mostly succeeds.
Many performances are good, and a few are terrific. And the set is a sumptuous marvel.
Sophocles' original is an even-handed exploration of a difficult question: When do the rights of an individual (represented by Antigone) take precedence over the common good (represented by the Theban king, Kreon)?
Kreon intends his cavalier treatment of the corpse to be a warning to the populace; he declares that anyone burying the body will be put to death. But Antigone is driven by another set of edicts: religious obligations. And the guardians of the spiritual realm are every bit as punitive and unyielding as any human dictator.
Brecht was a pacifist, and his interpretation ensures that the audience's sympathies lie with the play's heroine. His Antigone isn't a helpless young woman caught between two awful options, but a protester who sets out to defy a government run amok.
This production is set in the mid-1990s, during the war in the Balkans. Kimberley Lynne has designed a set consisting of tumbling-down rowhouses that have been painted ember red. The shell of a torched car on cinder blocks rests at one end of the stage.
Through an entryway, we see an old headboard and the broken section of a picket fence. Everything about the set tells us that the occupants on this block must scramble and scavenge to survive, like rats scurrying atop a pile of firewood just ahead of the flames.
The cast is led by Stephen Patrick Martin, who delivers a memorable portrayal of a jovial bully, a ruler who is at his most dangerous when he is at his most genial.
Martin portrays Kreon as utterly self-confident, someone who never for a moment wonders if he's doing the right thing. This Kreon easily overpowers more gifted men with the strength of his own certainty.
The title character sometimes is portrayed as half-crazed with grief, most notably in productions based on French author Jean Anouilh's version.
But as Brecht envisions Antigone, and as she is played here by Christine Demuth, our heroine is impassioned but still in control. Demuth portrays a supremely rational, concentrated flame of a woman who comprehends the consequences of defiance.
In addition, Jen Plants gives a delightfully natural performance as the leader of the chorus. What makes her delivery so colloquial is that it is unforced and emphasized by the appropriate body language: a flip of the wrist here, a drooped shoulder there, so the words emerge from her mouth as if for the first time.
Director Raine Bode makes only one significant misstep, though unfortunately, it occurs in the prologue. The director has two children read the parts of Antigone and her sister, Ismene.
The girls recite the dialogue off-stage; the audience sees two dolls seated on a second-story windowsill. Behind them, an expressionless actor apparently manipulates the dolls "acting" out the words.
The effect is quite beautiful; it creates an image of grief-stricken innocence and establishes the theme that the sisters are being manipulated by powers beyond their control.
But it doesn't work because it's impossible to catch what the children are saying. The girls read with little expression, and the amplification blurs their words.
That's a shame, as there's no denying that much of the play's rhetoric has eerie resonance to the war in Iraq.
Later in the show, Antigone tells Kreon: "The men in power always threaten us with the fall of the State ... and so we give into you, and give you our power, and bow down."
He retorts: "You agreed to everything when you challenged nothing."
Sound familiar?
mary.mccauley@baltsun.com
Never-Ending War
Brecht Adaptation Feels Way Too Relevant For Comfort
THE LYING KING: Stephen Patrick Martin tries to stare down Christine Demuth.
Antigone
By Bertolt Brecht
At the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival at St. Mary's Outreach Center through Nov. 11
By John Barry
In our war-torn world, there's no time like the present for a production of Antigone. When Bertolt Brecht reworked Holderlin's German translation of Sophocles' original, Europe was still reeling from World War II, and Brecht had witnessed war-based economies' destruction as leaders, for one reason or the other, were incapable of admitting wrong.
With its translation of Brecht's play, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival reframes that militaristic disaster in the context of the 1990s Balkan conflict. Kimberly Lynn's elaborate scenic design places the Antigone tragedy on a dark street with a wrecked car and a generally decaying urban landscape.
The choice of settings is original but puzzling. The racial and internal complexities of the Balkan conflicts and the straight-ahead imperialist hegemony of Brecht's Kreon are difficult to match. You immediately want to guess what the parallels are: Is Kreon Slobodan Milosevic? Are the Thebans the Serbians? Meanwhile, you're impatient to draw parallels to the more recent conflicts in Iraq, which feels ominously convenient.
In a broader sense, though, this particular adaptation makes sense. Violence in Antigone, and in Brecht, feeds on itself and draws those around it into an endless cycle of battles that, by the end, outlive and crush the people who supported them. The Balkan wars certainly qualify in that respect. And since last year's anonymous $1 million endowment, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival has more financial wherewithal with which to work. Not suggesting that it's blowing it all on elaborate sets, but from those to whom much has been given more is expected.
The first half of this production is an obligatory exposition of the conflict. In the opening scenes, Kreon (Stephen Patrick Martin), king of Thebes, attempts to storm the barricades of Argos. Soldier Polynices has defied Kreon by deserting the army, while his brother has died in the conflict. Kreon has had Polynices killed as a traitor and leaves him on the road, unburied. Antigone (Christine Demuth), Polynices' sister, buries him on pain of death, when her sister Ismene (Tara Bradway) refuses to collaborate. And after threatening Antigone with death, Kreon seals her in a cave.
Antigone tones down the catharsis of the play's essential tragic conflict, but it's still there. Demuth's Antigone comes across like a sweet princess whose love for her brother is taking her down the wrong path. As Kreon, Martin is low-key and even awkwardly avuncular, lacking any sort of innate charisma that is usually associated with military dictators. Adding a refreshing comic touch, Dana Whipkey portrays a week-kneed subject who ultimately rats out Antigone.
The fire really gets lit in the second act. The pretense of the Balkan wars fades into the background, and the parallels to a certain contemporary leader become hauntingly familiar. Kreon has returned as a conquering hero, assuring the populace (in the form of the chorus) that the conflict is almost over: mission accomplished. Then the "almost" starts to loom a little larger over the victory celebrations. A little more time is required to seal the victory, and the populace starts to get a little restless.
Kreon's popularity rating plunges, and he suddenly becomes the subject of ridicule and anger. Here Martin's portrayal of a cocky but bumbling idiot blooms. Kreon has been trapped in his own bubble. And in a humorous, straightforward performance as the blind Tiresias, James Kinstle interrupts a victory performance to lay it out for Kreon and all the rest to see: "You are dancing before you won it," he says. "Mismanagement cries for greatness and finds none."
The discontent rises in the cowed but grumbling chorus, whose citizenry has been willing to go along with the adventure as long at it was over quickly. Now, Kreon appeals for patience: "Just one more battle," he pleads, before he's left wondering if he's "started something too big."