A GRAVE SITUATION

Director Nina Sawyer '01 and her company were blessed by remarkably gorgeous weather for their outdoor production of French existentialist Jean Anouilh's Antigone, and by and large the cast rises to the elements' implicit challenge in this production, one that starts slowly but gains momentum as it marches toward its foretold conclusion. 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.

The play details the characters' struggle with this concept of roleplaying and asks whether they have any freedom given the certainty of their fates. Antigone is therefore a largely verbal affair, but the first few scenes establish a questionable tone. Mike Weidman '02, who plays the Chorus, is loud, clear and expressive, but so smarmy as he introduces the play that one would expect him to be quite knowingly introducing a bad Saturday Night Live sketch rather than Anouilh's searching parable. Beatrice Kitzinger '03, Caitlin Harrington '03 and Liz Clinkenbeard '01, as Antigone, her sister Ismene, and her nurse, respectively, suffer from a similar problem in their early exchanges: they belabor the irony of remarks about Antigone's future with such self-conscious intensity that the production threatens to become both maudlin and fatally unsubtle.

Luckily, however, these early jitters disappear as the play moves onward. Rayd Abu-Ayyash '01 gives the production's most outstanding performance as Creon, King of Thebes, whose Machiavellian exterior hides a more compassionate realism that cares more for the living than for the dead. Declaring Polynices a traitor was a political expediency, yet Creon argues it has created a peace that Antigone's actions may threaten. Abu-Ayyash has Antigone's most finely drawn character in Creon, to be sure, but he does not shrink from the task, maintaining a strong, clean elocution and succeeding at keeping his long monologues from becoming flat or boring. It may be too much to assert that he brings the other actors up to the level of his own performance, but Weidman and Kitzinger in particular are much sharper in their scenes with him; Abu-Ayyash's exchanges with a bumbling but philosophical guard, excellently played by Rob Hughes '01, are also a delight. Anchored by this solid group of four, Antigone moves smoothly to its conclusion after a few initial kinks.

The power that the production evolves, nonetheless, seems to belong almost exclusively to the actors. There is no lighting, no sound, no set; the only real evidence of staging are the lazy circles that the actors draw around each other as they pace the grass of the courtyard. And while Anouilh's script can certainly support a minimalist production, this one struggles to establish any sense of atmosphere. It is difficult to forget that one is in the middle of Adams House. The costuming is confusing: most costumes are appropriately spare, but they range incongruously from a generic pink Elizabethan dress for Harrington to the fashionable ensemble of v-neck t-shirt, flat-front chinos, black leather loafers and silver watchtopped tastefully by a simple red shawlfor Abu-Ayyash.

Additionally, elitist though it may be to say, performing the play in English instead of French automatically robs some of the truest life of Anouilh's words. Sawyer has not done a tremendous amount to reinvigorate the script and turn her production from a fine staged reading into an evocative drama. This Antigone is rich in ideas but never comes around to engaging the senses.

Please note that this review was scheduled to run Oct. 20th Arts section. Our appologies to the cast and crew of Antigone for the delay. Please also note that in the interest of objectivity, this review was edited by Arts Executive Editor Christina B. Rosenberger.