Sophocles' Anitgone is, apparently, one of the great tragedies of the Greek civilisation. In a way that is pretty self-evident, since it's still with us after two-and-a-half-thousand years, but the question often asked of such old plays is whether they can still hold relevance for a modern audience. Different productions, under very different conditions from the original performances, try to emphasise different things. With the Old Vic's reputation for world-class theatre this looked like an interesting propsition...

The story is based around Antigone (pronounced Anti-gon-ee), the daughter of Oedipus, he of the killing his father to marry his mother fame (although as the programme tells us, that's not quite how it went, but that's another matter). Her two brothers have been killed in battle, one defending the State, one fighting against it, and the latter is obviously refused a burial by the State's leader, Creon. Antigone seeks to bury her brother out of love, even if though a death penalty has been put on such an action. What with the modern obsession with good storylines, soap-operas and so forth, the next bit is not hard to predict. Antigone burries her brother, is brought before Creon, who sentences her to death, and later decides this is too good for her, and that she must be cast into a hole in the rock which never sees any light, and live there along forever. The complication is that Creon's son, Haemon, is engaged to marry Antigone. The rest should be left for the playwright to tell, but suffice to say it doesn't have a happy ending, unless you're of a particularly masochistic bent.

The set was simple but effective, at least in as much as it didn't need changing right the way through the piece, which itself doesn't last more than an hour and a half. The chorus are used to tell the story and help to create an atmosphere that at times becomes very tense, through humming, and movements. The costumes are almost evocative of some kind of wasteland, and the lighting combined with the colours of the clothing really does help to control the mood of the set superbly. The reason I skim over these three things so quickly is that there really isn't an awful lot to say about them aside from this. Whilst nothing was very spectacular, nothing was really much of a mistake to have included either, and the simplicity with which it was done reminded one that movable sets with lavish decoration would probably not have been available to the original actors (neither would electric lighting with coloured gels, but that's beside the point).

There are less good points to make though. In my opinion, the play was too short. Whilst there is little the modern directors can do about this (they could hardly ask Sophocles to write another half-hour onto the end of it), it's still a point that should be made. To me, the whole thing seemed a bit rushed, with a lack of opportunity to really get to know the characters involved, and not enough was made of one line whilst Antigone was going to her fate - which amounted to saying she was paying for her father's sins - to make it an interesting point. Likewise, some of the issues dealt with seem a little dated perhaps - Haemon's conviction that he should fight for his wife because she cannot do so herself, being a woman. Admittedly this was a lot more relevant in Ancient Greece, but it seemed a little peculiar at first.

What really struck me, however, was that once the play got to within about twenty minutes from the end, it got a lot more interesting. Despite the aforementioned lack of empathy with some of the characters, the final scene really was tragic. It reminded me of the climax of Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet, and knowing the writing techniques of Shakespeare and his contemporaries I suppose it's perfectly possible that this is where he got the idea from. The fact that the ending managed to be so moving, however, really was possibly the most remarkable thing about the piece. It seemed rushed in places and at times as if it was labouring a point, such as Antigone's repeated mantra that she has never known the marital bed.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this. It's done well enough, but lacks the normal sparkle one expects from the Old Vic. Nothing much was wrong with it, but it could have been a lot stronger as well. An interesting performance of an interesting play, but falling a bit short of the BOV's usual high standards in my eyes.

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