Antigone Takes to the Stage at KES

As tickets sell out in record-breaking time for the Senior School production of Sophocles Greek epic, Mrs Bruton reviews this ground-breaking piece of ensemble theatre

Parent v child; brother v brother; sister v sister; individual v society; fate v free will; law v individual conscience …. the third instalment of Sophocles’ tragic trilogy explores ancient tensions which will drive a schism through families, communities and whole nations. This was the first full scale Senior School play to be staged since the start of the pandemic (although let’s not forget the seven – yes, seven individual year group ‘bubbled’ productions KES Drama department put on last year!) It is a tale of a people forced to make impossible choices and ripped apart by the consequences, a tale that ends with dead bodies piled up on the stage and humans portrayed as mere playthings of the gods, a tale which felt both very apt for our times, and yet was paradoxically – lyrically – uplifting! Perhaps it was the sheer simple beauty of the staging; or the integrity of these young actors’ performances; or the palpable sense of a cast and crew pulling together with a passionate desire to create something beautiful in our rather ugly times. Who knows, but on this monochrome stage, darkened by a chiaroscuro palette of black and grey, the pale luminous yellows and shimmering opals stood out like faint glimmers of hope in dark days and left this reviewer feeling - hopeful!

The staging was simple. A grey post-apocalyptic landscape, with separate zones starkly delineated by the yellow tape so familiar in the Covid era. A group of soldiers in SWAT gear appeared to issue edicts to the audience: ‘Masks to be kept on, by the order of the Leader of Thebes … Laughter is allowed – although this is a Greek Tragedy’. Then the whole cast appeared, singing an a cappella version of Avici’s ‘Wake me up when it’s all over!’. Starkly ‘bubbled’ into distinct groups – citizens, politicians, lovers, TV crew, prophets, sisters, friends - they each danced to their own conflicting melodies: the Macarena, the Robot, a jive, a boogie, even a few Tik-Tok moves. And thus the divisions in this society were made clear, even before the scene was shattered by an opening duel which saw two young men die and a stark warning from the chorus that more bloodshed was to follow.

But hope glimmered through the darkness. ‘We will be the generation who mend all that has come before!’ declares Antigone, a girl caught between duty and passion, between sister and brother, between the law and her own individual conscience. Played with astonishing energy and power by Ellen Schofield and Lily Chapman, these were tour de force performances that left no audience member unmoved. Her internal turmoil was echoed, refracted, reflected in the beautiful physical theatre sequences of her friends – Charlotte Clark, Beech Mills-McDonald and Defne Sertoglu – amplifying the power of the tragic heroine’s performance through dance and simple symbolic gesture. But it was the image of the solitary luminous figure in a mud-stained skirt, centre stage, facing death with unworldly stoicism and dignified defiance that will stay long in my memory. 

A counterpoint to Antigone’s defiance is her sister, Ismene, the voice of obedience, compliance and duty – her agony and impotence exquisitely captured in the beguilingly beautiful performances of Maddie Davies and Luiza Britton. At the end of the play she is the sole survivor of a family cursed by the gods and - in a fascinating new feminist interpretation of the classics (what will Mr Bull make of it?) the whole of Thebes slowly bowed to her rule, leaving the audience with an ambiguous image of fragile peace and muted optimism. The two young actresses captured Ismene’s precarious emergent power as she stands with her dead family at her feet, defiant like a candle flickering to stay alight in a dark world. 

Surrounding these two young girls, the forces of political oppression close in. Creon and cronies arrive as though swaggering onto the stage at a party conference, the newly appointed leader surrounded by simpering spin doctors and a ruthlessly pragmatic PR group. Initially a slightly comic bunch, played by Violet Fitzwater Bowker, Lucas Kover Wolf, Charlie McGuire, Ella Sinden and Isla Byrne, they brilliantly paint a satirical portrait of the political machinations that go on behind closed doors of power. And yet they become increasingly desperate - and increasingly sinister - as their control of the volatile political situation slips through their fingers. 

For Creon is a leader caught in a self-made trap of own monstrous arrogance, going head to head with the Gods, only to be undone by the temerity of one bold girl, - and paying the highest price for such hubris. Neve Riley and Ollie Cochran delivered a devastating portrait of a desperate leader – and a desperate parent – clinging to the last vestiges of power in home and state, fatally uncompromising to the last. As Creon screamed at Haemon, demanding filial obedience and inadvertently signing his death warrant, these two young actors issued a cry of pain that tore at the audience’s heart like claws and left us utterly divided in our sympathies. 

There were some astonishing stand-out individual performances in this piece – India Purdie’s poignant monologue as the grief-stricken Eurydice; Horry Foster/ Benjie Poole’s rapid and compelling transformation from boyish besotted lover to defiant son then finally tragic martyr cradling his dead lover in his arms; Jacob Cooper’s glamorously sinister embodiment of Propaganda, with its eerie echoes of the ‘Hunger Games’. But it was the ensemble work that lent this production its real power. The news team, played by Roman Bradford, Dotty Hodge, Edie Osmond and Hester Poole, were alternately comic, grotesque, prescient and parasitical, as their salacious desire for gossip, scandal and headlines held a mirror up to our own media-obsessed culture. The citizens and friends, like Haemon’s companion, played by Ian Korzuch, amplify the struggles of the key protagonists in surreal slow motion physical theatre sequences to convey the sense of a world in turmoil. The ‘Keystone Comedy’ soldier crew – Silas Collins, Iyshea Hender, Oscar Lowton, Clem Scotland, Ollie Featherstone and Jonty Manners- Bell – who are sometimes braggingly bellicose, brashly belligerent, positively pugnacious, but at others comically chaotic then pitifully tragic – just a bunch of normal guys, just ‘following orders’, pawns in a game that is bigger than they are, caught ‘between the pass fell incensed points of mighty opposites.’

The decision to portray Teiresias, the blind seer, as a quartet of dryad-like nymphs was a bold and brilliant stroke - perhaps more TS Eliot than Sophocles (I await Mr Feeney’s verdict with eager anticipation!), but entirely in keeping with the collaborative energy of this whole piece. And as these oracles of doom – played with lyrical and hypnotic intensity by Ebony Hammond, Lollie Mckenzie, Sahara Purdie and Henry Skinner - danced, sang and wove their webs of prophecy around the helpless figure of Creon, who remained ever deaf and blind to their warnings, they created some of the most beautiful visual images of this whole production.

Memorable too were the musical moments that lent this piece new layers of power and beauty: Maria Mergoupis’ haunting strains on the violin; Joseph Walker leading a chorus of voices soaring above the chaos and carnage on stage; the operatic strains that accompany the horrific shadow play image of Antigone suspended from a noose, her dead lover at her feet. And the dissonant chords as the entire cast reel in slow motion horror as the ‘whirligig of time brings in his revenges’ and the death toll mounts. Horrifying yes – but cathartically beautiful, entirely in the sense that Sophocles intended! 

Mrs Bird, Mrs Tamblyn and Mrs Stevens-Craig came together as a trio of directors for the first time in this production, and that spirit of collaboration brought an incredible eclectic energy to this multi-layered piece. And that ensemble spirit extended to the cast too - to see pupils from Years 10-13 on stage together for the first time in nearly two years, bound palpably by a shared creative camaraderie, was quite special to witness. As the UK lurches towards Plan B and Christmas seems once more in jeopardy; as Omicron cases soar and a newly masked nation prepares for WFH and vaccine passports, this production seemed to speak to the fears and horrors we have all endured over the last two years. But it also spoke of hope, of the resilience of the human spirit, of the indefatigable power of individual conscience, and of how the collective spirit of collaboration can restore harmony. Because this will be ‘the generation to change what has come before’ – and watching the integrity and simple honesty of this incredible young KES cast inspired me with hope for the brighter future they will build!

Photos from the production can be viewed below.

Flickr album: Antigone - December 2021 | Height: auto | Theme: Default | Skin: Default Skin