In theory, Tom Littler’s decision to set ‘Antigone’ in a generic Middle Eastern country is brilliant. It’s a contemporary setting that meets the challenges of antiquity: its holy crimes and barbaric punishments, its burial rituals and sexual inequality. Against the Arab Spring, its portrayal of a tyrant stamping out dissent resonates.
However, the setting makes more sense of Sophocles’s play than vice versa. We get Arabic trimmings – hijabs, incense and wailing muezzin – but no one behaves accordingly. Vowels are plum; feet, shoulder-width apart. It’s more Middleton than Middle Eastern, putting cadence first like an old-school RSC production.
Jamie Glover’s Kreon speaks with a lion’s purr, but never actually threatens. His soldiers manhandle their prisoners as if on a tentative first date. Littler soothes where he ought to assault.
Timberlake Wertenbaker’s complex text is handled with admirable clarity, but there’s not enough pity and fear. As Kreon himself says, ‘I hate it when those caught in the act of evil want to turn it into something beautiful.’