September 9, 2022
by Avery Saad
Antigone Cast; Image by Helen Murray
The ambiance of Antigone was a strong one of anticipation. My class had waited fifty minutes in the cold rain, staring at two sets of pink balloons and the name “Antigone” in pink Styrofoam shapes across the stage– presumably the set to be climbed on, to be moved. I was quite excited to see how they would use such a dynamic and playful space for such a seemingly dynamic show. Once the play had actually started however, I was deeply disappointed.
The production of Antigone at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre had an extreme amount of potential. The theatre itself is set up like the amphitheaters in Greece, giving the perfect space for an ancient Greek adaptation. The concept of the adaptation was incredible. The playwright Inua Ellams attempted to apply modern day British islamophobia to the ancient Greek classic: addressing the potential for a muslim prime minister, the controversy around the hijab, drawing attention to the pipeline of discarded kids looking for answers and only getting them from extremist groups like ISIS, and the hoards of Muslims getting stopped by cops on the streets or stopped in airports because they ‘look suspicious’. The adaptation manages to draw the needed attention to all of these points, and then pushes it too far. The play continues on to compare ‘minorities’ (white women and muslims), and disregard the strong message it’s trying to send, instead taking the opportunity to undermine Tony Jayawardena’s Creon by making him look like an ass, instead of the smart yet stubborn character his is within the original play by Sophecles.
This message was extremely timely. It premiered as one horrid Prime Minister was stepping down, and another rancid one was stepping in. Rishi Sunak had the potential to become the UK’s first Muslim Prime Minister, and seeing a show like this, during that time, could have been powerful. Then at the end of the run, Masha Amini, a young woman in Iran, died under extremely suspicious circumstances, most likely due to police brutality and her hijab. The protests and murder of women in Iran is a current event that is showing off exactly what Ellams is trying to say. But having a good concept is not enough to get a message across.
The execution of Ellam’s Antigone was bad. The script itself was choppy, and managed to put both Antigone and Creon in the wrong, when the dilemma is that both should be right in their own ways. Holly O’Mahoney, from the CultureWhisper.com says “Ellams’ chorus comprises a cross-section of the British public. Speaking as a collective and often in rhyming couplets, it’s they who voice the writer’s wisest and most moving sentiments on the issues raised here”. I completely disagree with her. The script’s use of slam poetry felt out of place, and cheap, next to the better-than-mediocre monologues about the hatred and injustice served to the members of Muslim communities.
Besides the script, the direction was poor. It was extremely disappointing to see that the Life of Pi director Max Webster managed to fail so heavily in this project. Just because there is a bad script doesn’t mean that the directing has to feel so clunky and wrong. It felt like a high school play where an actor would stand on the stage, face the audience, say a line, and then move again. The incredibly dynamic set could have really saved this production, except after about thirty minutes, the cast threw all of the pink Styrofoam pieces off the stage, and never used them again. The one saving grace between the set and the direction was the choice to have Antigone sit in a small little box, center stage, for the majority of act two, showcasing how she impacts everything around her, even if she is not physically there.
The small cast, made up of mostly South Asian actors, was a welcoming sight to see, and having a visibly disabled actor, while not making it a statement, boded well for the production. And yet the acting was subpar. The message of an extremely diverse cast (in ability, body type, race, etc.) while trying to convey an extremely timely and relevant message of islamophobia in Britain was something that I physically could not take with me, since I was so focused on how horrid the production itself was.
There were plenty of things within this production of Antigone I had to criticize which was a shame because there was such promise. The concept was incredible. The diversification of the stage was stellar. However, the production itself fell short too many times for it to be enjoyable.
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