Completing its presentation of Sophocles’ “Oedipus” trilogy — following previous-season productions of “Oedipus Rex” and “The Gospel at Colonus” (a musical adaptation of the ancient Greek “Oedipus at Colonus”) — the Court Theatre stages “Antigone” with a spare intimacy that conveys big meaning.
Director Gabrielle Randle-Bent makes Greek tragedy look easy, which it most certainly isn’t. She finds a style here — which the entire, exceptional ensemble aligns to — that expresses an ideal balance between the realistic and the presentational, the character as individual and as point-of-view, the narrative as specific and symbolic. Ringing with contemporary social-justice relevance, the piece sings, sometimes literally, with the African beats of a multi-talented two-person chorus.
“Antigone” tells the story of a city-state, Thebes, attempting to heal itself after civil war. And failing.
Oedipus is now dead, having once brought the city stability but then blinding and banishing himself after discovering he fulfilled the very prophecy — killing his father and marrying his mother — that he had sought to escape. One of his sons, Eteocles, became king while the other, Polyneices, was exiled, only to return and lay siege to Thebes. Eteocles and Polyneices then killed each other in battle, leaving the leadership of Thebes to their uncle Creon.
Creon, determined to show authority and moral clarity, has buried Eteocles as a hero and issued an edict declaring that anyone who buries Polyneices’s body will be put to death.
This is where the play begins. Antigone (Aerial Williams), Oedipus’ daughter, has determined that it’s her duty — to family, to the gods — to bury Polyneices no matter how wrong he may have been. Her sister Ismene (Ariana Burks) attempts to convince her otherwise, to no avail.
This opening scene sets the approach, with the sisters talking quietly, as sisters will, then arguing intensely, as sisters do. You might say they agree to disagree, in a play that’s all about disagreement. Williams’ Antigone conveys a royal glamor (emphasized by the sparkly contemporary fashion of costume designer Raquel Adorno) that feels related to her sense of certainty. Burks’ Ismene, in more delicate and colorful dress, radiates a humble empathy.
The unpersuadable Antigone does what she must do. The unpersuadable Creon does what he says he would. It’s a tragedy. It doesn’t end happily for anyone.
Along the way, Sophocles asks us to contemplate power and purpose, loyalty to family vs. the law, the relationship between tyranny and justice, the line between admirable resoluteness and prideful obduracy.
What’s so impressive here is how cogently the big ideas are argued, and yet how personal, and immediate, they feel. Randle-Bent even adds a recorded conversation of women in her own family, one that reflects on Antigone’s choices to do what she believes is right while aware of the consequences.
Other productions have attempted to make Creon’s perspective a bit more convincing at the start, and his comeuppance a touch more sympathetic, at least for the suffering of Thebes. But with that initial recording, and the subtle and not-so-subtle smugness of Timothy Edward Kane’s Creon, it’s clear from the get-go where this production centers its moral sympathy.
The choices here emphasize the underlying misogyny. Creon turns to the beautifully painted walls to whine his resentment at being challenged by a woman, so very explicit in Sophocles’ text and Nicholas Rudall’s translation. (The late Rudall was the founding artistic director of the Court and a University of Chicago classics scholar.)
That moment also shows off the highly effective sound design from Willow James. Microphones here are used to delineate the public and private — not always as you’d expect — and in other ways, often raising the intimate qualities of the work.
The entire cast shines, including Danielle Davis and Cage Sebastian Pierre, who play the chorus, onstage the entire time, bringing poetry, song and dance as means of expressing the underlying tensions.
Two other supporting performances also demand special mention. Julian Parker brings brilliant, offbeat humor — so contemporary without changing text — to the hesitant messenger character chosen to bring Creon bad news. And Cheryl Lynn Bruce, as the blind prophet Tiresias, combines the character’s ethereal authority with an earthy wit.
It’s rare to see a show that at once feels so modest, and yet simultaneously so grand.
