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Stage Review: 'Antigone': Immersion deals well with tragedy
Thursday, June 24, 1999 By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic
God bless those durable, variable stage texts that withstand fresh assault, providing a proved testing ground for new theatrical talent.
For some reason, the older classics get assayed most often by what I call spur theaters -- offshoots of college theater departments that undertake to prod and provoke. Just now, Unseam'd Shakespeare, one of our oldest spurs, is having a postmodern go at Chekhov's "Three Sisters"; recently, the professional PICT (only tangentially spur, I guess) did stylishly well with Sheridan's "The Rivals"; and now the fledgling Immersion Theatre and director Penelope Miller Lindblom is tackling one of the primal greats, Sophocles' "Antigone."
This is not just Sophocles' "Antigone," but the 1944 version by the great French playwright Jean Anouilh. (It isn't only newcomers who like to scale the crags.)
Although inevitably influenced by its World War II environment, Anouilh's Antigone is no simplistically driven French resister, nor is Creon simply a Nazi apologist. Anouilh is at pains to help Creon make an even better case for governmental necessity than Sophocles.
He is so reasonable that "Antigone" loses its ideological conflict and becomes pure tragedy of the inevitable. Antigone becomes an almost existential hero, choosing death out of moral principle.
Immersion follows Anouilh by moving the play into the vague present. The wartime debris and graffiti on the set speak of the Balkans (where the ancient play is actually set, come to think of it). Thebes is a ravaged, amoral little place ("this absurd little kingdom," Creon calls it). A TV camera and reporters help tell the story; video monitors recycle war crimes footage.
In this setting -- in any setting -- Karen Baum's Antigone is very young. But she's old enough to defy "public order" and challenge the necessities of Creon's rule. Her passion makes us question, too, so you see why they have to get rid of her.
As Creon, Jack Goodstein shows surprising firmness with little of his usual floundering about. Only his big speech about the pride of Oedipus is delivered as intemperate rant.
Aaron Stetzik's Chorus is matter-of-fact, delivering Anouilh's simple lectures on the inevitability of tragedy with an appropriate shrug and banality.
Samantha Camp plays Ismene with vigor, although she is hardly the pretty little weakling the text seems to describe.
The Immersion Theatre made its bow last month with Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." Some thought my review was harsh, but I thought I did them the service of taking their attempt seriously and pointing out some of the ways it wasn't well thought through.
That also gives me some credibility (this is how criticism works) to say that this "Antigone" is a sizable advance.
Granted, it's a lot easier task. Primal tragic conflict is more congenial to inexperienced actors than the complexities of a darkly comic Shakespearean universe.
But director Lindblom makes things easier by putting everything firmly in the modern world, which limits the choices an actor has to make.
Further, she's pared the play down to well under 90 minutes, condensing its arguments and giving supporting roles and walk-ons clear, simple concepts to help focus their work.
This is direction that supports youthful performers instead of requiring it to keep proving itself.
STAGE REVIEW
"Antigone"
Where: Immersion Theatre at Penn Avenue Theatre, 4809 Penn Ave., Bloomfield/Garfield.
When: 8 p.m. through Sunday.
Tickets: $7-$10; 412-782-1318.
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