Antigone was written nearly 2,500 years ago but in Polly Findlay’s lean modern production it feels sharply relevant to our times. The leads, Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker, suggest the difficulties of reconciling the rule of law with moral duty, and the results are explosive.
This interpretation of Sophocles’s tragedy highlights the bureaucratic nature of injustice and the intrusive spread of a surveillance culture. The inflexible Creon (Eccleston) has seized control of Thebes and must now impose his authority. As a mark of this he won’t tolerate the burial of the traitor Polynices, whose sister Antigone (Creon’s niece) is appalled, condemning the decision’s sheer indignity. Creon insists that duties to the state matter more than family ties, and his obstinacy is that of a born administrator.
Always intense, Eccleston is at his best in a deeply charged scene with his scandalised son Haemon (Luke Newberry). Jamie Ballard is chilling as Teiresias, the prophet who discloses the damage Creon’s policies will cause, and assured support comes from Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and the almost wordless yet physically eloquent Zoë Aldrich. Whittaker’s performance as Antigone is sensitive, although some of her speeches lack weight.
The less satisfactory elements have a lot to do with Don Taylor’s version of the text, a mix of fluid modern idiom and stentorian excess, sometimes diminishing the emotional complexity of the original. Still, the production makes Sophocles’s story of civil disobedience feel like a political thriller, albeit one without a precisely defined context. One moment Creon resembles Tony Blair, the next he’s closer to Syria’s President Assad. Findlay’s direction has both focus and scale; her vision of the play is urgent and completely sustained.
Antigone runs until July 21 (020 7452 3000, www.nationaltheatre.org.uk).
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