Reviews: The Burial at Thebes

Based on Sophocles ‘Antigone’, a story that is over 2500 years old, this translation is by Seamus Heaney.  It is Greek tragedy which tells the story of a cold, hard king, Creon, who refuses to bury Antigone’s brother with honour, because he fought against the state. She does not agree with this and considers a challenge to Creon’s authority. This sets the scene for many themes to be explored: young against old, family ties, the role of women and state power. However, I found it difficult to see the relevance to the modern world.

The set was plain and boring with no scene changes at all. The main prop was a large bowl, which was to contain various things from water to fire.

I have never seen a Greek drama before, so the over acting, as I saw it, could have been normal for this type of theatre.

I didn’t really enjoy this production, but my favourite part or scene was that of the musical numbers. I felt really quite amused by them and enjoyed watching the play for the time they were on.

The play has a PG rating, but I would say it is totally unsuitable for children under the age of 14. They would find it too difficult to follow.

"Sophocles was over 50 when Antigone, his second surviving play, triumphed at the Festival of Dionysus. In its uncompromising view of the immutable laws of gods and men, it belongs to an early age of tragedy, a era in which irreconcilable positions clash and all human parties fall victim.

Surprisingly, the gods are absent; there is no prologue, no initial homily. In Seamus Heaney’s new translation, The Burial at Thebes, penned for the Dublin Abbey Theatre centenary last year and here receiving its British premiere, we are pitched straight into the warring sisters: Ismene, who holds that "In the land of the living the laws of the land obtain", and Antigone, loyal not to human edicts, but to "the power that sees all".

Jessica Curtis’s set - a mirror image of a Greek theatre, the action taking place on a semi-circular orchestra (dance floor) - supplies a spare, subdued stone-grey background, against which the cast don grey chorus cloaks to speak, sing and dance, then shed chorus garb one by one to assume principal roles. The characters seem almost elemental, as if hewn out of the rocky background; especially effective when Murray Melvin’s blind Tiresias confronts Michael Byrne’s posturing Creon and dents his breezy self-confidence near the play’s close.

The power of Lucy Pitman-Wallace’s beautifully crafted production rests in the way she lets Sophocles’ lines speak for themselves. Characters, notably Daniel Rigby’s doomed Haemon, facing up to his frosty father, do a ritual prowl to introduce themselves before launching in. But action is reined in to a minimum.

Mick Sands’ chorus music feels elemental too, superbly sung or intoned by the cast, with lute or solo flute accompaniment. Heaney’s chorus metres work wondrously well; some spare three-part chanting, and even in one instance a feel of Irish folksong.

Jodie McNee’s Antigone and Michelle Terry’s Ismene imposingly lay down the ground rules for this political set-to. Joan Moon’s brief blossoming as Eurydice, Creon’s hapless spouse, brings added agony to the denouement.

But it’s Byrne’s smug Creon who unleashes this flood of mishaps. At the outset, he positively preens, basking in the crowd accolades like some dreary demagogue, sputtering doom-laden decrees. Draped in dogma, he looks increasingly like a shipwrecked mariner. What makes Sophocles’ version so searingly tragic is that Creon changes his mind. He gives in. But by then, it’s too late."

Roderic Dunnett

Grange Street

Alfreton

14^th November ‘05’

A blank page, a bland stage on which Seamus Heaney and Lucy Pitman-Wallace have translated and recreated Sophocles’ Antigone.

It begins and ends the same, with the simple trickling of sand cascading down from the ceiling of the stage.  Minimalistic set, props and costume highlight the class and purity of the acting.  Antigone’s character, played by Jodie McNee, has a raw and passionate edge and her acting seemed fresh and real.  The use of music and movement created and performed live by the cast gave the play a cultural and elegant feel.  The inspiration of today’s issues such as the Iraq war, portrayed in the play, allowed it to have a voice to the 21^st century audience.  Michael Byrne played the character of Creon with absolute feeling and along with the two leading female roles, Antigone and Ismene, he stood out to me as a powerful character.  Although the play has a very historic background the themes of loyalty, tragedy, compassion, betrayal, authority and love are recognised by the audience as applying to modern-day life.  The play expressed just how far you are prepared to go for someone you love and how you will pay for your mistakes and arrogance.  Many other themes and issues were explored within the play like the importance of the Gods and the legacy of the underworld.  For me one of the most powerful scenes was one of the opening scenes, a fiery discussion between the two sisters Antigone and Ismene.  In my eyes the setting of the stage represented a Greek amphitheatre which played host to this dangerous fight between the hot headed Antigone and her compassionate sister.  I interpret that the silver bowl collecting the falling sand at the beginning of the play is a representation of the deed of properly burying her brother Polyneices mounting within Antigone before the time of the plays opening.  This burdening wish portrayed through the sand is then what Antigone uses to wash herself with before being accused of the deed and condemned to death for it.  The idea of the chorus being on stage for the majority of the time and actors moving between character roles and the chorus, is an interesting concept.  Sometimes a little confusing but nevertheless adding colour and understanding to a play that could be potentially overpowering and distant.  I did thoroughly enjoy the play ‘The Burial at Thebes’ and it was far different to others I have seen.  At times I must admit it lost me for a while but the classic acting and raw passion of the play drew me back in again.

"Sophocles’ great tragedy Antigone has been performed since its debut in 470 BC in Athens. Seamus Heaney’s new translation, making its UK debut here, creates a stripped-down, fast-paced and deeply humane version, with poetry that rings out as clearly as a fingernail chimed against the rim of a glass.

The teenage Antigone (Jodie McNee, making an impressive professional debut) begins the play determined to break an order made by her uncle, King Creon (Michael Byrne) following a war caused by her two brothers, in which each killed the other. One is arbitrarily proclaimed a hero, the other a traitor. His body is refused burial and left for the dogs and crows. By challenging Creon’s judgement, Antigone threatens his authority. She defends her city’s traditions, but is condemned as a traitor herself.

Creon stands firm, and provokes the anger of the city’s Gods. The citizens, too, are uncertain. Their chorus (which every character inhabits when not

centre-stage) offers beautifully atmospheric songs of advice and commentary on the rapidly escalating tensions. With an arena-style set, and simple robes, the ten actors use only their own voices and movements to create every facet of the drama. The end result is a gripping theatrical tour-de-force with very obvious contemporary implications."

Wayne Burrows

"Could Antigone have claim to be the most flawless play ever written? Spare, austere and without an ounce of dramatic fat on its bones, it sometimes feels as if every other development in theatre exists merely to pad out the perfection of Sophocles’s original example. At least, that’s how it seems watching Lucy Pitman-Wallace’s production, whose signal achievement is to animate the drama in a form Sophocles himself surely would have recognised.

The purity of her intention is indicated by Jessica Curtis’s design, which encircles the action in a simple, stepped amphitheatre. Costumes are elegant classical drapes, and the movement (choreographed by Sue Lefton) is stately and restrained. Yet the real masterstroke is to restore the chorus to its original musical function. Mick Sands’s a cappella 10-part harmonies are not only sublime to listen to, but banish all the dreadful, stilted choric speaking that plagues most contemporary productions of Greek tragedy.

Pitman-Wallace also has the happy idea of allowing each principal character to emerge and retreat into the ensemble as required. This, of course, is an entirely non-Sophoclean innovation, as the main protagonists would be clearly identified by their masks. Yet it has the effect of turning a family affair into a matter of communal responsibility.

This idea is reinforced by Seamus Heaney’s outstanding new version - first seen at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin last year - whose choice of title subtly implies that the tragedy may not only be Antigone’s but everyone’s. Jodie McNee superbly plays out the central dilemma, hinting that Antigone is as much a victim of naivete as heroism. But the balance of events weighs equally heavily on Michael Byrne’s Creon, who imperiously demonstrates the irony that a leader’s greatest weakness can be an apparent show of strength.

We spend a good deal of time debating what constitutes a work of total theatre. We tend to forget that it has actually been around for almost 2,500 years."

Alfred Hickling

"It begins and ends with plaintive Arabic music and a stream of sand trickling on to the stage from above.

The Middle Eastern flavour of the image unavoidably calls to mind the Iraq War. Otherwise, Lucy Pitman- Wallace’s production of Seamus Heaney’s version of Sophocles’ Antigone has a refreshing neutrality that allows us to focus on the drama’s potent universality rather than labouring its topicality.

Polynices and Eteocles, sons of Oedipus, have destroyed one another in a bloody power struggle. Their uncle, Creon, King of Thebes, has decreed that while Eteocles should receive full burial rites, the body of Polynices, the rebel, should be disgraced and left exposed to the elements.

The edict flies in the face of human pity and of divine law, and Antigone, Oedipus’ daughter, cannot tolerate it. So, knowing that the punishment is death, and despite the pleading of her sister Ismene, she defies Creon and buries her brother. The subsequent tragic chain of events destroys not only Antigone, but her betrothed, Creon’s son Haemon, and his mother Eurydice. Only in the full horror of what his action has cost are Creon’s eyes opened to his injustice.

Pitman-Wallace’s economically eloquent production delivers the tale, in particular its opposition of state and individual, with arrow-like directness.

Jessica Curtis’s curved, classically inspired design, in shades of earth and stone, evokes an embracing sense of ritual, and the main players emerge from the Chorus, casting off their robes to assume their roles.

Heaney’s translation constantly changes its colours, modulating between Creon’s autocratic, fiscally obsessed speechifying and the passionate, panicked language of Antigone and Ismene. Haemon, meanwhile, has the quality of a serious, socially conscious teenager, appalled by his father’s behaviour; and there’s an engaging musicality to the Choric text, enhanced here by Mick Sands’s music and Sue Lefton’s movement."

"Michael Byrne, as Creon, is vainglorious, self-righteous, and piteous when, ultimately, he discovers himself to be a king "wrong-headed on the throne, wrong-headed in the home". And Jodie McNee’s Antigone burns with conviction like a pale and slender candle" 

"it’s engrossing to watch — and to listen to."

Sam Marlowe

"I didn’t think that going to a Greek tragedy was my idea of a good night out, but I was wrong.

This production of Seamus Heaney’s brilliantly distilled Burial at Thebes (just one and quarter hours), staged in an amphitheatre of constantly changing colours, is both intense and sublime.

Antigone, daughter of Oedipus (Jodie McNee) wants to bury her dead brother in defiance of ruthless King Creon (Michael Byrne) who orders the body to be left to the dogs.

A shaft of light memorably plays through a stream of fine sand onto the glinting bowl in which she muddies her arms.

There’s resonance with George Bush’s ‘War against Terror’ abound, with timeless references to the clash between politics and principles. You are ‘for us or against us’ and ‘the enemies of the state’ will be ‘flushed out’, creating martyrs and an unstoppable cycle of destruction.

A set which is sparse yet warm allows the words to drive the play, fuelled by passionate, mature performances and enchanting music.

The death of Haemon, (Daniel Rigby), not seen, simply recounted by a member of the chorus, is breathtaking.

Incredibly, Sophocles’ play first staged in 441 BC still has the power to hit home and surprise us."

Catherine Adams