Review: Antigone

“I never doubted for an instant that you would have me put to death”.

The Pembroke Players’ Antigone (Jean Anouilh trans. Lewis Galantiere) begins by telling us exactly how it will end. As the anguish and treason unfolds, members of this doomed royal unit hang up their coats and roll up their sleeves, and from then on, the acute mess of this reiterated story is delivered to its audience blunt, crude and bare.

The performance succeeds most in the effect of the atrophy of tragedy: All parties are so aware of the roles they must, but do not necessarily want to perform, that the roles of villain and virtuous become obsolete, but still retain emotive power. The casts’ physicality in the breaking voice, the clenched fist, makes us feel the full weight of a blow already dealt.

Image credits: Chris Lorde

As Michael Iorchir’s fantastic Creon states, we are in the kitchen of politics. Credit must go to Megan Kruger’s tasteful set decisions. The candlelit piano, the round table, utilised to shock at moments of tension, wed nicely with the tactful use of props to be funny, against all odds. The screens that provide a second, clandestine space lend something of the ancient to an adaption that is violently modern, with its anachronistic cars and cigarettes.

Image credits: Chris Lorde

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It is a strong performance all round. Maya Moh is commanding and concise as the chorus, giving us a helpful set piece opening where each character is named and described around. Her arch commentary on the tragedy genre is never unconvincing and does a lot for the thematic powers of the play. Michael Iorchir’s Creon has such gravity. His performance is tempered, until it isn’t, and deeply compelling throughout. Having him being the only character that communes with the chorus compounds that sense of a dire vantage over the tragic template that he sits within and predicates. Annie Rainbow’s strong Antigone is so viscerally live that she verges at time on the neurotic. She plays so well off a soberer Ismene (Ismene Forsyth) that it is a shame that the play doesn’t allow them more scenes together.

Indeed, the cast is impeccably well-suited: Creon’s stolid solidity is brought into relief by a mobile, overwrought Antigone, and we get a compelling set of doomed lovers (Riad El Samad is Haemon). It is apparent that they are a strong ensemble from the introduction-tableau that the chorus offers in the play’s first scene.

Image credits: Chris Lorde

We can never forget that Antigone is tragedy, but the tasteful comedic incursion of the nurse (Betty Blythe) and guards (May Daws, Chester Chen, Romola Goldfarb) does something towards this; Antigone has genres contend where lament meets terse pun. The physical comedy never goes amiss, introducing the element of laughter to a play of otherwise dire stakes. Antigone is a nicely polished production. The musical overtures are occasionally overbearing but work magically when the play asks them to, namely with Creon’s monologue. The clever use of lighting and shadow at the end makes for a lucid, deeply upsetting interlude.

Director Elly Na does an excellent job with Jean Anouilh’s (trans. Lewis Galantiere) Antigone. Don’t miss out – complement your Week 5 Blues with some tragedy!

4/5

The Pembroke Player’s Antigone is showing in Corpus Playrooms from Tuesday 25th February – Saturday 1st March. Get your tickets here.

Featured image credits: Chris Lorde.