Antigone
★★★★☆ Powerful
Bedlam Theatre: Wed 8 – Sat 11 Oct 2025
Review by Hugh Simpson
Antigone, from the EUTC at the Bedlam until Saturday, makes a 2500 year-old play as relevant as ever in a production of considered intelligence and fine acting.
The much-revived and adapted play by Sophocles tells of Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, who is determined to bury her brother Polynices with due ceremony, despite this being expressly banned by her uncle Creon, the new king of Thebes.
Bibi Benson as Antigone and Chorus. Pic Emily Sharp
On one level this seems a very obscure matter to modern audiences. However, there is so much in it that still resonates today – the conflict between the state and the individual, duty to the family, the distinction between law and morality, the dangers of authoritarian rule, the definition of terrorism, the oppression of women – that it is unsurprising that it is constantly being remade and rewritten.
This production – co-directed with confidence and skill by Georgia Thomas and Dan Bryant – uses an edited version of Don Taylor’s translation for the BBC in the 1980s. It strikes an interesting and generally successful balance between modern concerns and the play’s ancient dramatic and ritualistic roots.
There is often a danger with such venerable plays that the words are intoned portentously and reverently, giving an unsatisfactory distancing quality. Instead, the first scene here features Bibi Benson as Antigone and Cameron Herring as her sister Ismene fairly rattling through the dialogue as Antigone outlines her plan.
immediacy and drive
Straightaway this gives an immediacy and drive to events. Benson’s excellent Antigone is thoroughly recognisable and instantly sympathetic, however remote her worries about libations and deities might seem. Herring’s Ismene also strikes the audience as a real person with genuine internal conflicts.
Another modern echo is provided by Rufus Goodman’s impressive Creon, whose tousle-haired bonhomie and unbending ambition evoke more than one authoritarian politician of recent times.
Rufus Goodman as Creon (at rear) with chorus. Pic Emily Sharp.
Taylor’s translation shows its age just a little in the way the soldier who reports the burial is portrayed as something of a stock ‘regional working class’ figure in the way BBC drama always used to do. They did still put Sophocles on television, however, so shouldn’t be judged too harshly, and Theo Perrott is extremely good in the role, fleshing it out admirably as well as providing some necessary humour.
Reuben Strickland, as Creon’s son (and Antigone’s betrothed) Haemon, invests him with a fresh-faced, upright earnestness that is very effective. Spencer Shaw is his mother Eurydice, and is perhaps too quiet on first entrance, but provides another well-judged performance.
The blind soothsayer Tiresias is never going to fit in with modern preoccupations, and the directors thankfully don’t try. Instead, Hal Hobson provides a presence of considerable gravitas.
timeless
The deployment of the Chorus (Hemani Stallard, Alex El-Husseini, Lily Dickie, Bea Lermite, Sophie Lloyd, Jamila Salim, Oliver Mason, Christian Badcoe and Ava Godfrey) also has a timeless feel. While their dress is modern, the way they sing their lines accompanied by minimal musical backing is decidedly eerie and works exceptionally well.
Lily Goodchild’s lighting is atmospheric, while Luke Hardwick’s sound design and technical management are impeccable.
Not everything about the production succeeds. Famously, the play is as much Creon’s tragedy as it is Antigone’s, and making that character so closely identifiable with contemporary figures means that the ending does not really ring true.
give him a prize.
This Creon appears unlikely to have found wisdom through suffering; he seems more likely to say he was right all along, all the deaths are someone else’s fault and the chorus should give him a prize.
The deployment of the chorus upstairs at the end also does not quite convince (as well as leading to an extraordinarily long wait for the curtain calls).
However, most of this works very well. One of the best things that can be said for this production is that the (many) Antigones of recent years may have been worthy or interesting, but have not indicated why the play has a power that has made it survive so long. This version undoubtedly succeeds where others have failed.
Running time: One hour 35 minutes (no interval)
Bedlam Theatre, 11B Bristo Place, EH1 1EZ
Wednesday 8 – Saturday 11 October 2025
Daily at 7.30 pm
Tickets and details: Book here.
ENDS
