A Version of Sophocles’ Antigone by Seamus Heaney
Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company
The Pit at the Barbican until 29th September Oxford Playhouse: Wednesday October 9th-Saturday October 13th
For the centenary of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Seamus Heaney was approached to make a new translation of Sophocles’ Antigone and it was first performed in 2004. His version, entitled The Burial at Thebes, while it remains faithful to the original, gives the text a new sense of immediacy.
For those not familiar with the story, the eldest daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta was Antigone, whose name means “one who is of the opposite opinion.” Her defiance of her uncle, King Creon, is the catalyst around which the play’s tragedy evolves.
King Creon (played in this production by Paul Bentall) declares that Polyneices the dead brother of Antigone (Abby Ford) must be denied a decent burial as he had taken up arms against Thebes in the war that ensued after Oepidus had relinquished his Kingdom. Eteocles, the other brother of Antigone, who had fought on Creon’s side in the war, had already been killed, thus compounding the tragedy and fulfilling the doom laden prophecy that Oedipus had made before he died.
The king has no reverence for the dead but Antigone feels constrained to perform the funeral rites for her brother Polyneices, declaring “I will bury him myself. And if death comes, so be it.” Despite wise counsel from the chorus and the plea for clemency from his own son, Haemon, King Creon sentences Antigone to death by starvation, sealed in a cave. He remains adamant until he is shocked into a new awareness on the discovery that Antigone’s death has driven both his wife and his son to commit suicide.
This translation and the production of the play took place during the American led invasion of Iraq and there are many resonances with that and other recent conflicts. The grey concrete walls of the stage set are based on photos of bombed buildings in Beirut. Creon declares that “whoever isn’t for us is against us,” and that Polyneices “terrorised us”. Heaney’s blank verse translation underlines the conflict between political expediency and personal responsibility – the understanding that there is a higher law than that of the state. I experienced a brief longing to see this time transcending play performed with the weight of full chorus and cast during the cool of the evening in an original Greek amphitheatre. But for the time being the small Pit theatre at the Barbican must suffice.