DramaLondonReview

Antigone [On Strike] – Park Theatre, London

Reviewer: Chris Lilly

Writer and Director: Alexander Raptotasios

The Antigone of Sophocles has been the inspiration for a whole host of adaptations, of which the latest is Antigone [On Strike] at Park Theatre in Finsbury Park. This one, written and directed by Alexander Raptotatis, owes more than a smidge of its source material to Kamila Shamsie’s 2017 novel Home Fires, with its efforts to map ancient Theban blood feuds onto current crises with Islamic fundamentalism and responses to radicalised British Asians.

The set is a stark Ionic throne room, all surfaces shiny white, very useful for projecting images onto. The cast of four hand out little Bluetooth keypads to everyone in the audience, for this play is participatory – at key points, the action stops, and the audience is asked to make a choice, yes or no, with regard to a particular event or idea or problem that has just emerged from the narrative. The audience is told that the choices made will determine the action unfolding on the stage.

There are one or two problems with this concept. First, the stoppages to vote make the action of the play very disjointed. Second, it is increasingly clear as the evening goes on that the events of the play are as pre-determined as ever a Greek tragedy might be, treading a path to an inevitable conclusion, and that all the audience choices are not going to change that conclusion; and third, the moral dilemmas and political choices that are embodied on stage are not susceptible to simple yes or no choices.

Sophocles’ original play is nuanced and open-ended. Is Creon right or wrong to insist on state power when his kingdom has been ravaged by decades of civil war? Is Antigone absolutely attending to the letter of her faith in opposition to Creon’s edicts, or is there some teenage grandstanding involved in her choices? Sophocles doesn’t try to instruct his audience, he allows them to reflect, to make their own determination.

Alexander Raptotatis loads the dice in favour of young rebellion but fails to make any of the choices particularly clearly presented. The edicts of the gods are replaced by questions of citizenship, but the questions are not posed clearly enough to make choices plain or argued well enough to give any new insights into a fraught current dilemma.

The play, though well-intentioned, doesn’t have enough information to give its audience fresh insight, and its efforts to canvass opinions through electronic button-pressing derails the emotional journey that the actors are periodically presenting.

Updating Sophocles should allow for more nuance than the Athenian state permitted its playwrights. This production offers less.

Runs until 22 February 2025

The Reviews Hub Score

Participation Presentation Problematic.

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The Reviews Hub London is under the editorship of Richard Maguire. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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