To find the Abingdon theater, where
One Year Lease is reviving Jean Anouilh’s 1944
re-imagination of Antigone, I had to walk through
some of New York’s first postcards from the Republican
National Convention.
Mazes of steel
crowd-control fences partitioned the sidewalks, while
jersey barriers topped by two-foot iron grates blocked
off Seventh Avenue. In the street, police in riot gear
shoved flexi-cuffed people into busses, while officers
with nightsticks pushed the crowd through the caged-in
sidewalks.
Cops shouted warnings at passers-by
who allowed their eyes to flicker up from the ground to
the scene in the street; those who paused were escorted
away. Officers on motor scooters patrolled the
surrounding streets in squads of twenty or more.
It is possible that this show of police power
was purely innocuous, but it was no accident that I saw
it. The time and the location of this production of
Antigone were carefully chosen and the
juxtaposition was strikingly effective. Walking through
police roadblocks to see the story of Antigone, a young
woman who finds the workings of the social machine so
odious she sees no option but to throw her body into its
cogs, is enough to start even a moderate thinking in
manifestos.
Antigone is one of six shows
that make up the UnConvention, a festival of
theater-of-protest and political activism staged as a
counterweight to the Republican National Convention.
Anouilh’s re-writing of Sophocles' play about
the Theban royal family was done to protest the
collaborationist government of German-occupied France,
and the result is arguably one of the best and most
important plays of the 20th century. An intellectual
treatise that confronts rationalism with existentialism,
Anouilh’s Antigone explores the insoluble
contradictions between radical individualism and a
social contract that readily collapses into the
schizophrenia of fascism.
One Year Lease strips
this drama down to its barest essentials with a series
of theatrical tricks alternately inspired and
inadequate.
Their production is set in Baghdad,
and opens with a recording of a letter written by a U.S.
Army sergeant stationed in the Sunni Triangle. This is a
complicated re-alignment, since there is little
situational correlation between the events of the play
and the events of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
It
would be easy to portray the tyrant Creon as a stand-in
for the U.S. administration in Iraq—the play was, after
all, written to oppose an occupying government—but such
a literal metaphor would be difficult to maintain.
Instead, Creon, portrayed by actress Ariane
Barbanell, is an Arab leader, trying to control her own
rebellious people. The Baghdad setting works, in part,
because it is what we expect of a piece of political
theater in today’s charged climate. It brings the story
into the world of modern politics while still refraining
from cheap political sniping.
Some of the other
conceptual touches do not work as well. In some scenes
actors speak lines in the original French, in others, in
Greek. While the performers keep the narrative flow
clear throughout, the purpose of the linguistic exercise
eludes me.
In another "concept," the characters
who attempt to dissuade Antigone from her rebellion
against Creon are represented only by recorded voices,
in an attempt, perhaps, to reassign those character’s
voices to the machine they have chosen to participate
in, “the state.” Actress Tella Storey’s portrayal of
Antigone is strong, but with only a bag of sand and a
tape recorder to play with, even she cannot make the
scene work.
The fact that some scenes fall flat,
however, becomes almost irrelevant, because they are
essentially exposition. The drama here is Antigone
versus Creon; their scene together is the play itself,
and Barbanell and Storey make the explosion happen
without pity or remorse. They play the pure and violent
heart of the conflict between an aging tyrant and the
one thing he cannot understand or control: a human
being, not a subject, willing to die rather than accept
being governed.
When I left the theater the
streets had resumed a calmer aspect, but the message of
the play was still as clear as a shot in the face. The
existence of the state imposes a choice on each of us.
We are either Creon or we are Antigone. The moment is
coming when we will have to live out the choice we make.
The New York Times' article regarding the
disturbance on Seventh Avenue on August 27 can be read
here.
 Click here to view the
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Abingdon
Theater Mainstage |
Category:
Drama
Written by: By Jean Anouilh;
Translated by Marie-Pierre Beauséjour and Iason
Demos
Directed by: Ianthe
Demos
Produced by: One Year
Lease
Opens: August
27
Closes: September 11
Running
Time: 1 hr. 35
minutes
Theater: Abingdon Theater
Mainstage
Address: 312 West 36th Street,
First Floor
New York, NY 10018
Mapquest Directions
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Tickets: $12.00
Discount
passes to see all six mainstage shows of The
UnConvention are available at
www.theatermania.com.
Phone: (212)
352-0255
Online Ticketing: Theatermania
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Creative TeamWritten
by: Jean Anouilh
Translated
by: Marie Pierre Beausejour
Greek
translation by: Iason Demos
Directed
by: Ianthe Demos
Produced by:
One Year Lease and The UnConvention
Light
Designer: Mike Riggs
Sound
Designer: Sarah Pucillo
Set
Designer: James Hunting
Costume
Designer: Kay Lee
Graphics:
Brian M. Thomas
Dramaturg: Jessica
Applebaum
CastEvangelos Alexiou as
Haemon
Ariane Barbanell as Creon
Marie-Pierre
Beausejour as Chorus
Tella Storey as
Antigone
Voices:
Hannah Bos as
Ismene
Damien Carney as 2nd Guard
Brian Grosz as
Soldier
Jackie Kristel as Nurse
Jeffrey Robert
Taylor as Messenger
Paul Thureen as 1st Guard
Jim
Zirpoli as 3rd Guard
CrewDamien Carney, Gabe
Evansohn, Bryan Ginsanti, Karen Larkin, Stephanie
Williams | |
