Theatre - Kate Kellaway on a stark production of Sophocles
The chorus in Declan Donnellan's marvellous and arresting production of Sophocles' Antigone looks like a forest in winter. Each man carries a bare branch, each has a shaven head. Almost all, with the exception of one black man, are deathly white. They look like a cross between corpses and undertakers. And this is fitting because they are witnesses to so much death. Sometimes they are stilled with horror, sometimes they stir, like conscience on the move.
The tragedy is constructed like an artichoke: leaf upon leaf is removed until the heart can be seen. Antigone's brother, Polynices, has been killed while attempting to invade Thebes. Creon, ruler of Thebes, is insistent that he should not be honoured but left for the birds to devour, yet Antigone is determined to risk everything for her brother. There is every reason to be afraid of Creon: he can issue death sentences as easily as speak. But the extraordinary power of this work is that, with the exception of the chorus, everyone who sees him speaks out. He may be politically justified, but is he committing a crime against the gods? Jonathan Hyde is superb as Creon. He has such authority as a speaker that every word has weight. He dresses in glorious saffron - if it is possible for a colour to be ironic then this is it: for he brings nothing but black news to the people around him.
Declan Donnellan's version of the tragedy is admirably varied in tone: stately where necessary, deliciously vulgar as required. The messenger who comes to tell Creon that the body of Polynices has been tampered with is a delight. Can there ever have been such an entertaining circumlocutory "Don't shoot the messenger" speech? Zubin Varla is excellent in the role. But he is, if anything, better still when he metamorphoses into the distinguished and moving figure of Haemon, Creon's son. Haemon, like the messenger, has to nerve himself to speak. He begs his father to have the humility to recognise that "his tiny boat is weaker than the storm". His courage is all the more miraculous because at the beginning of the scene, he seems enslaved to his father, pale and submissive with a curiously oppressed-looking hairdo. But as the scene develops, the confrontation between father and son becomes galvanising, the best in the play. There is a thrilling conflict here between the political, the domestic and the divine.
Tara Fitzgerald appears, at first, as a rather incongruous Antigone wearing spectacles (this is presumably not intended to suggest that Antigone was morally short-sighted). She does not have the same innate authority as Creon, which is a shame - there would be more excitement if she could rival him. When she describes him to his face as "just a little man and you will die", it does not sound as suicidally audacious as it should. But after shedding her spectacles, she becomes a more passionate figure - and, at her best, has a lyrical urgency. Her relationship with her distraught sister Ismene (Anna Calder-Marshall) is an interesting companion piece to the relationship between Creon and his son: both are governed by a stressed love.
The third petitioner to Creon is the blind prophet Tiresias, alarmingly played by a doubling Calder-Marshall as a scary, sorry sack of potatoes carted about on piggy back. Her high, female voice somehow makes her prophecies sound all the more upsetting. She urges Creon to change: "Stubbornness makes us all stupid." But he seems as inscrutable as stone. Finally she reduces him - and they crawl round on the floor together as though they had only just hatched. Then follows a tremendous theatrical moment which seems to last for ever. Creon freezes in a trance, a prayer that will not take: kneeling with his head thrown back and his arms hanging loosely by his sides. And as he holds this moment, the chorus slowly get to their feet.
Declan Donnellan has reinvented the Old Vic, moving the furniture around with aplomb to create a stage in the centre of the theatre with the audience on both sides. It is a brilliant idea, for this is a play in which everyone is watched and there is no escape from judgement. The audience collectively stand in for God and can see from all sides. The stage itself is bare.
The stark quality of the production is part of its power; there is no distraction at any point from the tragedy as it unfolds. And when Antigone at the end speaks of fortune - good and bad - and concludes that in life nothing is certain but change, there is a feeling that she is speaking for all time.
"Antigone" continues at the Old Vic, Waterloo Road, London SE1 (0171-928 2651) until 15 January
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