Word: creon
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...Indeed, Anouilh's 1942 Antigone is not about suspense, but about the inevitability of playing roles. For Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, this means performing burial rites for her slain brother Polynices, who has been declared a traitor of the state and therefore forbidden those rites. For Antigone's uncle Creon, who rules Thebes, it means enforcing the law, even if he should have to execute his niece, who is also engaged to marry his son, Haemon...
Questions of duty, law and destiny encompass the heart of Antigone. In the Jean Anouilh version of this classic Greek tragedy, French angst envelops the tale of Antigone's challenge to Creon, her uncle and the king's conception of law. Two visions of how life should be lived are presented but only one can survive, with Creon unable to bend his laws and Antigone unwilling to compromise her sense of virtue. Any performance of classical Greek tragedy is a difficult endeavor and the Anouilh version of the play adds yet another layer of complication. Yet the production staff...
...aided in this by effective, movie soundtrack-like music at crucial points. The slight distancing effect of the music is countered by the characters' frequent exhortations to the audience, made especially effective in a small theater like the Loeb Ex. As the play heads towards its catastrophic ending, and Creon receives a come-uppance beyond his wildest nightmares, there is a brief moment in which the General (David Modigliani '02) reflects on the horrors of the Civil War. He describes seeing dead soldiers' bodies on the ground, futilely lamenting that he never expected to see a sight so gruesome...
...been transferred to Civil War-era Maryland, a border state and thus the most likely locale for the background story of the tragedy. Two brothers, sons of Oedipus (yes, that Oedipus), fight each other to the death, one brother killing the other and then dying from a bullet wound. Creon, the governor of Maryland (Edie Bishop '00) has declared that the Union Army brother will be buried with honor while his Confederate brother is left to rot. Creon's niece and the soldiers' sister, Antigone (Sabrina Howells), however, is determined to bury both brothers in spite of the edict...
...play is titled Antigone, but the real protagonist is the governor Creon. Bishop takes the role and plays it to the hilt. Her Creon is just this side of crazy: she is inflexible, imperial (ironically so considering she supports the Union and "liberty"), wrathful and utterly compelling. The other actors seem to feed off of her unreasonableness, engaging the viewers as they desperately attempt to get her to compromise. "A foe is never a friend, even in death," she declares. Although Antigone knows in advance the consequences of her actions, stating her loyalty to the dead and her willingness...