Word: creon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Creon (Peter Mitchell), Jason's father and ruler of Corinth, can be blamed for the relationship's messy breakup. Trying to be a good father, he looks out for his son's political best interests. He realizes that Medea is not from the right side of the Parthenon, so he sends her walking. Likewise, Medea's Nurse (Zoe Mulford) is looking out for her charge. Mitchell's hard-edged Creon is not exactly Heath-cliff Huxtable. But Mulford, with her sympathetic swooning and simpering, makes Mrs. Cleaver look like an absentee parent...
...Sophocles' Antigone, the tyrant Creon remarks at one point that "these rigid spirits are the first to fall." Referring to the stubborn will of his neice, who insists on burying her brother despite Creon's prohibition against doing so, the prophecy warns that if Antigone cannot become flexible in her religious philosophy, she will meet a bitter...
...person who does accomplish this is David Silver. He has four roles, Antigone's sister, a sentry, Creon's son, and the messenger. He does justice to all of them. But his performance as the sentry is a highlight of the play. Watching him itch and listening to him stutter, the audience gets a sense of the character--a bewildered common man stuck in the midst of a battle of kings and gods...
Pretty gruesome stuff, but none of it's in the play. Most of the performance takes place after Creon discovers that it was Antigone, his son's fiance, who buried the body of Polynices. Now he must decide how to punish her. He chooses the death penalty. Bad move, as the seer Tiresias tells Creon, because decreeing the death penalty gets one prematurely sent to to Hades. Acting like a god isn't advisable in Greek drama, and in the end Creon pays for it. His son and wife both commit suicide...
Limbaugh's direction is appropriate because it doesn't dominate the play. Most effective is the sparse set, which allows the grand verse to stand out on its own. The performance runs very quickly, under 90 minutes, which makes it bearable. But Elizabeth Wirick, Creon's attendant, deserves kudos for managing to stand by the king's side all that time and keep a straight face despite her lack of lines...