Antigone [on strike]
writer-director Alexander Raptotasios
with Phil Cheadle, Hiba Medina, Ali Hadji-Heshmati, Sorcha Brooks, Hanna Khogali
dramaturg Or Benezra-Segal
set Marco Turcich • lighting Ariane Nixon
costumes Marie-Cecile Inglesi
Park90, Park Theatre, London • 30.Jan-22.Feb.25 ★★★★
Reimagined from real events, this intense drama is inventively staged to draw on the way a news story plays out through political grandstanding and attention-grabbing headlines. It's also an astute spin on Sophocles' classic tragedy about a woman seeking justice in a system tilted against her. And there's an extra kick in the way writer-director Alexander Raptotasios so cleverly weaves interactivity into the narrative, forcing the audience to make key decisions that provoke responses and reveal deeper ideas.
The set is a whitewashed replica of the House of Commons, as MP Creighton (Phil Cheadle) rails against the young Esmeh (Hanna Khogali in video calls), who has been stripped of her British citizenship after leaving the UK as a 14-year-old to marry an Isis fighter in the Middle East. Now her husband is dead, as is one of her two children, leaving her a refugee without a home. In London, her sister Antiya (Hiba Medina) is at her wit's end after a court case goes against Esmeh, so she goes on hunger strike outside the Home Office. Her boyfriend Eammon (Ali Hadji-Heshmati) supports her, but has a serious conflict of his own.
All of this plays out in a swirl of verbal and visual activity, with headlines and messages projected onto the various surfaces of the set, including pointed questions posed by a TV news show host (Sorcha Brooks) that the audience answers on a keypad, then the results are projected as well. The story moves briskly over 90 minutes, as the adept cast members create various other characters who fill in the story, adding points of view that are both annoyingly loud and beautifully nuanced.
Performances are excellent across the board, as the cast commits to some properly earth-shattering moments. Dialog overlaps and scenes shift very quickly. Cheadle never flinches at Creighton's hardline right-wing views, strident and harsh in his refusal to see the human side of this situation, even as it affects his own family. Both Medina and Hadji-Heshmati have far more sympathetic roles, creating both warmly involving and darkly wrenching moments as Antiya and Eammon navigate a perilous situation. These young people simply want to see justice prevail amid terrifyingly over-amped events.
Packed with terrific details and stagecraft that skilfully deploys sights and sounds, this ambitious play is dazzling, never getting lost in its topicality because it continually reminds us that this is a story about flawed people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. By involving the audience in the decision-making, the experience creates unusually personal angles that counter-balance the more academic discussions and lofty prose. So this becomes about much more than Islamophobia, child trafficking, media manipulation or military intervention. The salient questions become "Do you feel well informed enough about this situation?" and "Who do you trust for the truth?" And then even more chillingly, "Should the majority rule?"
photos by Nir Segal • 3.Feb.25
