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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Young breathe life into antiquity Antigone Warwick
School Classical Society Bridge
House Theatre, Warwick
For a school – or indeed a section of it - to engage with the challenge of staging an entire Greek Tragedy is no mean undertaking. Even in
translation it requires a calibre of verse speaking, a quality of
stylised movement, a refinement Warwick School Classical
Society has already impressed me, mightily, with its staging last year
of Sophocles’s play Ajax, a drama of unusual type in its
depiction – not wholly intelligible to modern sensibilities – of the
decline of a man’s mind into raving lunacy on the sole basis of damaged
pride.
This year Warwick staged
Antigone, a Sophocles drama which Ajax may even predate (both
are clearly early works) and infinitely better known. For these plays
director David Stephenson has again amassed a motivated cast drawn from
all ages: the chorus alone spans at least three generations. That they harness so well,
speak so attractively (one or two on occasions a little too niftily) and
bring a wisdom beyond their years to the skilled pacing and emotional
urgency of this vexed drama – the pitting of one man’s dictatorial
vanity against virtually all the rest of the cast – speaks volumes for
these gifted young players, whose empathy with each other in and out of
role generates the unique kind of chemistry that makes a Warwick
Classical play a treat to behold and a joy to hear. Borsada’s special talents for
on-the-edge characterisation brought him last year into close affinity
with Ajax’s (as here) five-man chorus, in an absorbing and if
anything more terrifying performance. They were his salve, his
gentle advisors, his sympathetic hearers, who strive to save him from
the inevitable. Here they have a similar role, but stir scant response
from Creon, unexpectedly cast as Theban ruler, who seems to lack the
noblesse oblige of Boiotia’s true line of decent.
Borsada makes him this and
much more: a ranting hypocrite, the scourge of his family and an entire
nation, a despot who believes shouting is the solution to everything. He
ignores his confidants, his council, his duty sage, his wife, his son,
his prospective daughter-in-law; he consistently misses the point.
Sophocles has made the
unrelenting – though finally penitent - Creon almost too hard a
character. His ranting offers little scope for en route redemption; yet
what I would have liked from Borsada, and Stephenson’s production, might
have been a way – not easy - of introducing chinks of light into Creon’s
viewpoint: for from that might have stemmed more light and dark, and
certainly more air, in this play.
Chloe Wilson excelled last
year as Ajax’s inamorata and captive, the shrewd Tecmessa. Although
Antigone is almost excised from the last parts of this play, leaving her
bethrothed (the king’s son Haemon), the equally doomed queen and the
aged Theban seer Teiresias to join battle with Creon, her posture
betrayed a princess and her speaking was some of the most impressive of
the evening. When she and the son are
suddenly revealed rear stage (the Athenians had various devices for
rolling out corpses at Attic tragedies’ dénouements), in searing
brazen light hurled from above, it is a tableau of amazing power
and indeed tragic beauty,
The use of scarlet light on
the already scarlet-clad chorus had a gripping, threatening,
intensifying impact all its own; white pinpoints from above used to pick
out Creon, small groupings or a hunched chorus worked marvels (Technical
Director: Richard Cooper, Lighting Operator: Michael Ballard).
Warwick’s cogent set and
costumes were a marvel: impressive authenticity in tunics and other
attire, a well-judged restricted colour scheme, and pillars and benches
that looked the part rather than cardboard cutouts. But above all, the music – often a long sustained, haunting chord that suggested not just danger, but divine forces ominously at work behind the scenes – was a glorious success. Jack Borland handled the sound and got the balances and levels all perfect. As last year, I enjoyed and
found something in each one of these young actors’ performances. Olly
Layzell proved the best spoken of the chorus team, but both
energetically and subtly supported by the four other sensitive members
of an able team (five works wonderfully well, visually and audially),
including a promising youngster, Thomas Walter (it would be nice to see
him, with experience, turn into a Borsada). Bryn Jones especially impressed me last year as a youthful Odysseus, Ajax’s sympathetic supporter. He seems to have expanded his range: the strength of his Messenger speech and subsequent exchanges near the close had a tangible and beneficial impact on the last stages of the play. So, to a large degree, did
Alex Cottrial, a relative youngster, as an unbroken voiced Teiresias: he
had a depth to him, a measured manner of delivery so crucial for showing
up Creon’s intemperance; and blindfolded, he was nicely and attentively
led in by Louis McAuliffe. A chance to praise, early on
and towards the end, L The effective five-man chorus with Joe Turner, the chorus leader in the centre, surrounded by, left to right, Thomas Walter, Harry Jenkins, Olly Layzell and Rory Gill But the character who brought
the central section alive was Elliot Grocock’s Haemon, engaging in full
battle with his father and spouting a vast amount of sense, which came
over forcibly in the Robert Fagles translation. The high drama of this
scene almost outdid Creon’s central battle with Antigone. Grocock too
has grown in thespian stature since his last appearance, as Teucer in
Ajax, when he also impressed. Together these young,
convincing performers turned Antigone into the vast moral tussle
that it is, amounting to onstage open warfare. The play needs budding
talents like these to bring this searing story so vividly alive. They
did so unflinchingly, and with a great deal of verve and nous,
which as they will know, means a lot of intelligence. Roderic Dunnett |
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This
man is a bully, a bigot, and in the end, a ruler shorn of all the basic
instincts of wise and decent leadership.
with
the imprisoned Antigone found self-hanged and Haemon stabbing himself in
grief.
ucy
Evans’s cautious Ismene, not overborne by her sister and not without a
feisty, not necessarily diametrically opposite character of her own; and
Claudia Rivers, who served up an instinctive Eurydice (Creon’s ill-fated
Queen) who is all t