Antigone, or We Are the Rebels Asking for the Storm 

Reviewed by Gray Palmer 
Fugitive Kind Productions 
Through June 2 

RECOMMENDED 

At Bootleg Theater, Fugitive Kind Productions presents the premiere of a new version of Antigone by Matt Minnicino, directed by Amanda McRaven. In a program note, adapter Minnicino explains that his subtitle comes from a letter by Pussy Riot musician Nadya Tolokno to Slovaj Zizek (no comment about Tolokno’s taste in smart guys). 

Is this a Pussy Riot Sophocles? And if so, a Creon-critic might ask the company, “Have you committed hooliganism motivated by poetical hatred?” 

Yes, Fugitive Kind’s in-your-face interpretation is inspired by the celebrity Tolokno. But then, — who could be more in-your-face than Antigone?

So, why not? 

The play starts where Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes leaves off. Civil war has ended. Contending brothers, the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices, have killed each other. Their uncle Creon (Jason Vande Brake), now king of Thebes, grants state honors to Eteocles while the body of Polyneices, declared an enemy of the state, must rot in the field. In this way, Creon kills the dead again. And any attempt to bury Polyneices would be a capital crime.

Their sister Antigone (Sage Howard) will have none of it. She performs a hasty burial and escapes unseen. The corpse is uncovered. Guard is redoubled. She comes back, and she is captured. 

Director McRaven’s stage pictures are immediately stirring: the dead on a battle-field at the city’s seventh gate, the king delivering policy as a state ritual, the chorus sometimes as a spin-academy trying to stay ahead of an angry public, sometimes as that public (the ensemble does the choral speaking well), the visits to Antigone’s prison-cell.

Would this be tragedy under the sign of Dionysus without the weird? The gods have vanished from Thebes after the defilement of Polyneices. Fire refuses to light, prayers are meaningless, birds become strange. Creon calls for consultation from the seer Tiresius (the excellent Jeff Marras, also the production’s choreographer), who tells him, “Ak ak ak ak ak… Many bird beaks carry crumbs of that dead boy all over…” The warnings are ignored. 

The four principals — Howard in the title part, Brake as Creon, Jim Senti as Creon’s son Haimon, affianced to Antigone, and Mercedes Manning as her sister Ismene — are all strong.

Minnicino has added scenes to expand the role of Creon’s queen, Eurydice (a very good Emily L. Gibson), accompanied by an intern (in a touching performance by Alana Marie Cheuvront).

The new scenes and slight rearrangements don’t diminish Sophocles’ text at all. Gender-crossing in the casting of the Soldier (the appealing Petey Gibson) is welcome, and so is the use of Spanish by the chorus. 

Minnicino’s varied diction — working from a translation by Kenneth Cavender — does go loose and slam-jangly, frequently blunt and obscene from Antigone, but this is not an indictable theatrical offense. The work is decidedly an adaptation.

The production design is good: Set by Jeanine Ringer, lights by Karyn D. Lawrence, costumes by Allison K. Dillard, sound by Corrine Carillo. The skilled composer is Andrew Heringer. 

Bootleg Theater, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; Thu.-Sat. 7pm & Sun. 2pm; through June 2. (330) 209-7711209-7711 or www.fugitvekind.org. Running time: 100 minutes without intermission.