Antigone review, Olivier

Grave consideration

Greek tragedy is never an easy ride but by keeping Antigone short - 90 minutes - a bloody and bumpy ride of the best sort is assured. Quite why Director, Polly Findlay, has chosen to stage this particular version in a dull, brown, Smiley's People type office full of early 1970s tape-to-tape players, is never clear. The visuals are constantly at odds with the content.

This is a play about a prince left to rot on a hill. Polynices died declaring war on Thebes. The new king, Creon, refuses to honour him with a burial. When the dead man's devoted sister, Antigone, illegally buries him, Creon condemns her to death by entombment. The story pivots on the wrath of mortals and the gods when moral codes are challenged. Creon's refusal to do the right thing damns his own family, including his beloved son, to whom he will not listen. These are timeless themes that this week bring to mind the mass graves in Syria and Assad's intransigence.

Full of stories in which humans try to find their place in a world dominated by the environment and the gods, naturalism drives Greek tragedy. There is talk of hills and caves and carrion, and sunshine on rotting flesh. It is extremely odd, then, to watch the blind seer, Teiresias, in dirty vest and trousers and bizarrely disfigured, blundering into an English office amidst loud bangs and flickering lightbulbs to warn that the gods are angry. Christopher Eccleston as Creon hasn't even had time for his lunchtime sarnies which are still on the desk in tin foil. As he finally wobbles - in shirt and tie, and sounding a bit Cheryl Cole - it's more like watching a middle manager having a breakdown than a king driven mad by power.

In conclusion: Antigone builds to a crescendo that can't be ruined though it can be, and is, diluted here. A good cast works hard and Don Taylor's lively translation - at times too modern for the setting - delivers some great speeches.

References
National Theatre, Olivier tickets