The drama, ‘Antigone, the Burial at Thebes’, being offered at Belvoir, is suggested as an ‘interpretation’ of Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’ not a translation of the original.It is not ‘the text or … the criticism surrounding it, but the words and rhythms of another work entirely.’ (Heaney).In this work playwright, Seamus Heaney heard the ‘stricken urgent note … for the anxious, cornered Antigone at the start of the play’ and it galvanised him into this work.It was apparently inspired by the events that led to the invasion of Iraq.We however are left with the work on the page as interpreted for the stage by the present company, superbly directed by Chris Kohn.
It is a brilliant interpretation but unmistakably the work of Sophocles and that is very important.While Kohn comments in his notes that Sophocles spoke to an audience ‘thousands of years departed from [us] … of a different epoch’ it is the very nature of the Greek tragedy as defined by Aristotle in his ‘Poetics’ that ensured they wrote not for the Greek audience but for all men for all time.That is why it is a timeless piece of drama; it is why it speaks so urgently to us today.
When Heaney heard Antigone’s opening words, ‘What is to become of us, why are we always the ones?’
it was certainly directed to an audience accustomed to a different form
of theatre than that of today but the audiences remain very closely
related through time in nature.The theme of ‘Antigone’
is not constrained by the events that supposedly take place in the
story but by the outcome of the argument that logic presents through
the actors personifying what is put in the propositions.
Greek tragedy is first and foremost a debate.It
plays out the contrived events that illustrate its concepts in a
surreal situation and hopefully thereby leads its audience to a better
understanding achieving ‘catharsis’ (Leon Golden, ‘Catharsis’, 1962).How successful the dramatist ultimately had been was registered by the audience’s response in its conviction.The success of Sophocles
in the competitions at Dionysia as mentioned in the notes attests to
debating skills or aptitude in logic rather than good storytelling.According to Aristotle that was what tragedy was all about.
In this respect ‘Antigone’ probably stands supreme among the so called ‘Theban’ plays.The
reason it opened the Oedipus trilogy when it’s events plainly deal with
the story’s conclusion presages the sophist’s argument. The premise
appears to be that to apply deductive reasoning through the postulation
of a ‘polluted’ premise is to ultimately reap the whirlwind.To
personify this esoteric proposition the play ingeniously contrived to
introduce four siblings of an incestuous union representing the
‘polluted’ ‘factors’ within the logic.
The term
comes to the English as ‘cross over’ or ‘cross back’. In breed lines to
reintroduce the original sire into the line is referred to as ‘double
cross’ or ‘inbreed’ which has been figuratively extended in a socio
political sense to mean ‘betrayed’ in the first instance and ‘stupid’
in the second.This is possibly why the Cretans got such a bad name from St Paul.The
Greeks referred to them as having been inbred, presumably as a result
of it being a small island but in translation it read as being stupid.The children of Jocaster and her son, Oedipus, are therefore the results of a ‘double cross’.The
playwright then goes on to contrive the setting that results from
Eteocles’ ‘double cross’ of his brother, Polyneices by refusing to
stand down at the end of his term in office as prescribed by the now
deceased king, the boy’s father and half brother.This provoked war and the death of both brothers at each other’s hands.
By the time the syllogism is set up for the audience it would have been in no doubt as to the underlying logic of the argument.It
is expressed by Creon as ‘only citizens of Thebes are entitled to
burial, citizenship is predicated on loyalty to Thebes therefore any
person disloyal to Thebes should be denied burial’.It
would appear to be an unexceptionable syllogism for the audience of the
day but its major premise is flawed since it is subjective probably
being itself a product of deductive reasoning.It
immediately exposes the inherent injustice since it was Polyneices who
was originally wronged by his brother yet it’s his body that’s now to
be left out in the cold.The story that Sophocles
has his players play out before their audience is the tragic
consequences that it is asserted must flow inevitably from the
application of such flawed logic.
Just as Shakespeare, some two millennia later, would look back to these same Greek dramatists in crafting his flagrantly political work, ‘Titus Andronicus’, so these Greek dramatists were themselves looking back to their own classical time, their own ‘Golden Age’.In
trying to glean pathways to truth they had devised the process of
deductive reasoning and developed it into what came to be known as
Aristotelian logic.The play proposes a false premise and
then sets up the antagonist, Antigoni, to prove it wrong through a
valid syllogism of her own.
The
genius of the construct can be readily attested to by the fact that its
understanding of the basic fallacy in the application of this form of
logic continued to be resisted until Frege articulated the concept of multiple generality in the nineteenth century.
In this production Heaney and Kohn have joined with a magnificent ensemble of actors to render a play that in every way delivers on the aspirations of Sophocles’ original work.The
language is beautifully constructed, its rhythms precise and defined.
It presses the argument relentlessly to its bitter end.The
words of the chorus and elder neighbour coalesce in an easily traced
logic, demonstrating far more clarity than in earlier translations of
the texts culminating in the exquisitely crafted ‘The man obsessed is like a cock of the walk in a hurrying towards the worst.’
The play is staged under the design direction of Dale Ferguson with mandatory spareness.The music and sound by Jethro Woodward mark the crucial points of the drama with deft providence.The lighting, too, in the hands of Luiz Pampolha, remains for the most part singularly stark emphasising a realism that forces the audience to gravitate to the words.They are what drive this production and they do it unerringly and irresistibly.
Deborah Mailman plays Antigone with a genteel but uncompromising reserve matched to a contained and often bewildered Creon played by Boris Radmilovich, his foreign accent underlining the fact that here was an interloper ill at ease among those with more local savvy.Kate Fitchett as the sister Ismene expresses the confusion of one uncomprehending of a refusal to compromise. Gillian Jones, playing Tireseus and Euridice gives an outstanding portrayal of the blind seer.Hazem Shammas, portrayed Haemon with wonderful passion and Pacharo Mzembe (Pach) presented a memorable debut performance as the guard with James Saunders as the luckless messenger.It was left to Paul Blackwell
as chorus, merging the elder neighbour in this production, to comment
on the argument as it is developed. It is understood that he filled the
role at a week’s notice.His accomplished treatment in
the part deserves great credit conveying a reluctance to interfere with
a palpable horror of the implacability of the antagonists. It was a
stylish interpretation.
What it was that Sophocles was so concerned with cannot be said with certainty.Women
in public office then and for much of the past and ensuing millennia
represented the institution of the Temple in the city state as votaries
of the Gods as opposed to men who represented the Palace or instrument
of Government.It is possible therefore to surmise from Creon’s language that it was the same conflict that is at the heart of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, that contest between Church and State that made all of Europe its battleground right up to Napoleon.When Creon protests that he will not be ruled by women it is likely that it found its echo in Henry’s challenge, ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’
By couching it in a theoretical hypothesis Sophocles wrote a drama that crosses far beyond even this great divide.It
is with extraordinary timeliness that this articulate work is presented
to an Australian audience in such an accessible format just as the
debate over Regnal Commonwealth as opposed to a Republic is being once
more brought onto the political agenda.
In such
debates of fundamental politics both sides claim the ‘truth’ through
often manufactured or ‘polluted’ logic and each presses and resists
their respective ‘truths’ just as Creon implacably pressed his ‘truth’
and Antigone resolutely defended hers.The outcome of a contest between the immovable and the irresistible ends in common destruction.
It was
not so long ago that these forces converged in Australia in much the
same circumstances as devised for Antigone’s ill fated brothers who
contended each other at the gates of Thebes.In 1975 Malcolm Fraser, the then opposition leader made a peremptory bid to wrest government from Gough Whitlam, the incumbent Prime Minister.Whitlam resisted.Each claimed the right under the constitution.It could have similarly rent this country and ‘set loose the dogs of war’.As Jesus Christ pointed out no man can serve two masters and a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.
The
constitution of ancient Greece ultimately proved too fragile to
withstand the pressures of those convicted in flawed logic as most
constitutions are.Most are too rigid.We may just be lucky enough to live under one that in the words of Creon’s son Haemon, ‘is able to bend to the flood’.Not only do we have the means of order at hand but the ability to measure both it and ourselves through a prism of time.We may be the lucky country after all.We would do well to remember the words of Healey’s chorus, ‘the man obsessed is like a cock of the walk in a hurry towards the worst’.
Antigone is very much a relevant drama for today and for us in particular, it’s also drama at its profound best.It provokes another syllogism of a more sound ancestry; we are all human, all humans are fallible therefore we are all fallible.Thank
God that in our case we have had the opportunity to correct our
mistakes before we found ourselves ‘sacrificing the living to the
dead’.
Company B presents ANTIGONE
The Burial at Thebes
a version of Sophocles’ play by Seamus Heaney
Venue: Belvoir St Theatre, 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills Dates: 10 April – 25 May Times: Tuesday 6.30pm, Wednesday to Friday 8pm, Saturday 2pm & 8pm, Sunday 5pm. Tickets: Full $54. Seniors (excluding Fri/Sat evenings) and Groups 10+ $45. Concession $33.
Student Rush $25 for Tuesday 6.30pm and Saturday 2pm, available from 10am on the day (subject to availability) Bookings: 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au
After keeping myself awake during this mercifully short production, I was barracking for Creon to top himself - as quickly as possible.
Awful set which added nothing (other than to underscore a sense of Amateur Hour), ridiculous costumes and as for heaney's "marvellous" rendition, I lost count of useless cliches after the first dozen or so.
Badly acted, awful direction. Belvoir has given us so many hits in the past 18 months I guess we were due for a miss (and this was wose than the last worse, Capricornia)
