Celia Keenan-Bolger  is the “I” in the title of Anna Ziegler’s provocative, contemporary retelling of the Greek tragedy, in which Antigone ( Susannah Perkins) has an abortion, in defiance of her anti-choice uncle Creon (Tony Shalhoub), rather than (as in Sophocles’ original play)  breaking the law by burying her brother.  Identified in the program as “Chorus,”  Keenan-Bolger serves as the narrator of the story, but on stage she tells us her name is Dicey, a single middle aged  woman from Pittsburgh who has remained obsessed with Antigone – feels reproached by her – long past high school.  “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)” is framed as Dicey’s story almost as much as Antigone’s. 

As with most recent adaptations I’ve seen of Ancient Greek tragedies – and Antigone in particular is having a moment  (Antigone in Analysis  is opening this weekend at La MaMa; The Other Place opened last month) – the effort to adjust a 2,500-year-old play to fit modern times can feel strained and confused.. “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)” doesn’t always work. But it has several things going for it, especially a  trio of first-rate leads who are able to navigate between the intensity of the tragedy and the intelligence of the philosophical debate, while also delivering on the looseness and humor that is promised in the play’s title.

Dicey felt reproached by Antigone from the moment she read the play in high school, as she tells us in the opening monologue, because  “here was this girl who says whatever she wants, whenever she wants, even on pain of death, while I couldn’t raise my hand to ask to go to the bathroom.”

Her obsession with the play explains why, on an airplane flight, she is struck by a teenager reading a copy of the play, marking it up in red ink.

“I’m sorry,” I say (because the only way I can start a conversation is to apologize for my entire existence), “but can I ask why you’re reading that?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
‘It’s just that you don’t seem to like it very much.’
‘It’s not that I don’t like it….I’m just like, is it even about her? It seems like it’s all about her brother’s body. A man’s body. Is it even about her?”

The teenager is portrayed by Perkins, who (somewhat confusingly) turns instantly into Antigone, still in leather jacket and thigh-high boots. What follows reflects Dicey’s new understanding of the story — in effect Ziegler’s attempt to make Sophocles’ play about not a man’s body, but a woman’s.

This explains why Antigone’s act of defiance is now about an abortion, which of course colors but doesn’t completely derail the unfolding of Sophocle’s plot, with more or less familiar scenes from with her sister Ismene (Haley Wong), and Haemon, her fiancé and Creon’s son (Calvin Leon Smith.)  There is a harsh, Brechtian-flavored scene with a backroom “proprietor” (Katie Kreisler), but there are also several humorous scenes, such as a surprising sweet, droll one when  Antigone, avoiding Creon’s coronation, picks up a shy guy at a bar, whose name is Achilles (Ethan Dubin) “not THE Achilles. It’s just a name..Thanks Mom and Dad.” Kreisler, Dubin and Dave Quay also portray a trio of cops who are Creon’s bodyguards in a series of scenes that are meant to be funny, some of which actually are. 

It won’t surprise anybody that Tony Shalhoub is amusing as an ordinary man thrust into a power and authority that he didn’t want, and doesn’t know what to do with; in the first of the scenes with the bodyguard cops, there is a long awkward pause before he says “Am I supposed to…tip you, or?” – not knowing how to dismiss them.

This makes the confrontation between Creon and his favorite niece all the more bracing. The moment that is likely to be most remembered is when Antigone takes off all her clothing and talks about marks and landmarks in her body — from “This is my bad ankle. I was playing soccer on a muddy field and I slipped and my foot went one way… “ to “Inside here, that’s my womb. What a word: womb. It’s of unknown origin, which feels appropriate. It came from nowhere, just as we come from nowhere, sprouts in the dark.”

Creon looks away, tells her to stop.  That scene, simultaneously political and poetic, for better or for worse, is the play Ziegler intends literally embodied. 

Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)
Public Theater through April 12
Running time: 2 hours and 15 minutes, including one intermission
Tickets: $89 – $185
By Anna Ziegler
Directed by Tyne Rafaeli
Scenic design by David Zinn, costume design by Enver Chakartash, lighting design by Jen Schriever, sound design and composition by Daniel Kluger
Cast: Ethan Dubin (Cop 3/Achilles), Celia Keenan-Bolger (Chorus), Katie Kreisler (Cop 1/Proprietor), Susannah Perkins (Antigone),DaveQuay(Cop 2/Palace Guard), Tony Shalhoub(Creon),Calvin Leon Smith(Haemon), and Haley Wong(Ismene)


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