Description:
Jean Anouilh’s wartime play, written in 1944, revisits the story told in Sophocles’ classical tragedy of the same name, but brings a modern, more nuanced, interpretation to the events.
Following the death of Oedipus, civil war breaks out in Thebes as his sons, Eteocles and Polynices, quarrel over who should be king. Both die in the fighting and Creon, their uncle and king in their place, rules that Eteocles should be buried as a hero but that Polynices, seen as a traitor, should be left to rot where he fell. His sister, Antigone, refuses to obey Creon’s edict, and for this she must die.
Lines of conflict and responsibility are no longer as clear cut as they are in the Greek original, where Antigone is morally “right” and Creon “wrong”. In Anouilh’s play, things are not so simple. Antigone appears to have right on her side in saying “No” to Creon’s edict, and in dying for her cause as a result, but Creon’s case for saying “Yes” is far more plausible. Someone must say “Yes”, and take the hard decisions which guarantee the safety of the State, and hence the public good. It is too easy to opt out and simply say “No” to everything. And yet, in saying “Yes” one is inevitably compromised, even corrupted.
Anouilh’s Antigone illustrates then modern concerns: the struggle between freedom and responsibility, between pragmatic realism and uncompromising idealism, the clash of generations. In addressing these issues, Anouilh has written a masterly play, full of sobre classicism, beautiful language and finely crafted scenes. The great clash between Antigone and Creon is one of the finest moments of twentieth century theatre, and Antigone remains one of the best French plays of modern times.
