Antigone

Anticipating Martha Graham's directive to know what the protagonist had for breakfast (Clytemnestra in that case), Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) in fact shows Antigone having her anachronistic petite cafe. Written and first produced during WWII, his adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy is full of domesticating, realistic details, and a modern psychological dimension clearly specifies each character's thoughts and motivations. This very modernity is what director Francoise Kourilsky emphasized in her strikingly contemporary production for UBU Bilingual Company at its resident theater, the French Institute's Florence Gould Hall. Gestures were used sparingly, and the emphasis appropriately was on Anouilh's language and characterization. Greg MacPherson's no-nonsense lighting and Carol Ann Pelletier's stylishly understated costumes seconded Kourilsky's approach.

And just what were Sophocles' characters really saying in private? Anouilh posits that much of it was just the stuff of everyday life. Will the Guard (Simon Fortin jabbering magnificently) get his promotion, or can the Nurse (a caring Jacqueline Bertrand) guess Antigone's supposed secret lover that has lured her into the night? King Creon (an alternately noble and blustery Jean Leclerc) opens the way for Antigone (dynamic Myriam Cyr) to renounce her quest to bury her brother against the royal decree. She momentarily toys with the possibility of a bourgeois life, but ultimately she chooses to fulfill her tragic fate and ignores her sister Ismene's pleas to reason. (There was an added level of believability with the Greek sisters played by real-life ones -- Myriam Cyr and her fervent sister, Isabelle Cyr.) In spite of apparent free will in this version, Haemon (brawny Dominick Aries) is still drawn to suicide by Antigone's doom.

Kourilsky had Anouilh's frequently intrusive narrator (an excellent Carlos Aravalo as The Chorus) speak his lines in English, while the main action was done in the original French. This seemed an especially good solution for the many French literature students in the audience who might have been able to follow the action but not the narrator's asides that reveal much of the author's philosophy of theater. Luckily, those who expected a discussion of Anouilh's Antigone as allegory for French resistance vs. collaborators were disappointed by the fresh post-performance dialogue, more intelligent than many this reviewer has heard.