Intriguing 50-minute online Antigone from Oxford’s master theatre makers Creation

Antigone: Creation Theatre Company online

from Tuesday, May14-18

By JON LEWIS

HELEN Eastman’s intriguing 50-minute online Zoom Creation Theatre Company production of Antigone, in association with Barefaced Greek, an Oxford University Classical Greek film-making group headed up by Eastman, bends the convention of characters narrating off-stage actions by framing the story in a television studio.

Two journalists, one, an anchor in the studio (Neil Urquhart), the other a reporter on the scene (Ben Moss), are informing the public of Thebes about breaking news in the aftermath of a civil war.

Home audiences receive text news messages and interactive voting instructions.

Loosely following the tragedy by Sophocles, the Zoom functions of blending live and recorded scenes separately work well in the context of a busy, chaotic news environment.

Creation’s rep company, who have just finished performing Animal Farm, appear in filmed clips.

Nicholas Osmond, speechifying at a lectern in front of some kind of Parthenon, plays Thebes’ new dictator, Creon, who assumed power after his brother-in-law Oedipus’ sons Eteocles (Creon’s favourite) and Polynices (Creon’s rebel enemy) were killed in a battle for power.

Eteocles is to be buried with pomp, Polynices left outside the city walls for animals to eat. A death sentence awaits anyone who defies Creon’s new orders.

Creon is immediately defied by Antigone (Ailsa Joy, the third of the live performers), sister to the slain brothers, who attempts to bury her brother.

She is aided and abetted by Creon’s own son, Haemon (Herb Cuanalo), her boyfriend, but not by her sister, the regime-friendly Ismene (Emily Woodward). Antigone hacks into the news flow with frenzied guerilla social media postings that challenge Creon’s autocracy leaving the ruler no choice but to arrest her.

These latter plot developments are all part of the breaking news cycle, but Eastman also adds to the dynamic with locals’ eyewitness accounts spoken in ancient Greek.

Antigone hangs herself rather than exist as a prisoner and Haemon takes her own life by her side.

Haemon’s mother, Creon’s wife, Eurydice (Anna Tolputt), tellingly stands in front of the lectern

without talking to the press, and

then leaves, her silence condemning her husband without breaking any laws.

The diversity of Creation’s performances is outstanding.