This performance of Sophocles’ Antigone, is the culmination of a three year Minderoo Foundation partnership between The West Australian Academy of Performing Arts and the international theatre company Cheek by Jowl, founded in 1981 by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod.

Both were appointed Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2017 for services to theatre and design.They have performed productions in Opera, Ballet and Theatre across the globe. If anyone was lucky enough to see their Angels of America performed in Perth a while ago, you will know of its incredible impact and beauty of design.

Executive Dean of WAAPA, Professor David Shirley, points out that this interaction has exposed students of acting, production, and design to the very best the world has to offer. Lucky them.

Not so lucky for Antigone, born a woman in a Greek world where the inequality of the sexes was par for the course. This fact, along with its themes of discord between jurisprudence and ethics, family allegiance and civic duty, and the entitlement of the individual versus the power of the state, has made it one of the world’s greatest plays. That it can be adapted to suit the tenor of the day is an added lure – for instance in Jean Anouilh’s 1944 adaptation when Antigone becomes a symbol of the Resistance’s struggle against Nazi oppression.

Antigone is the last of Sophocles’ three plays following on from Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. After Oedipus’ self-exile, his sons Eteocles and Polynices fight each other for succession to the Theban throne. When both die in battle their uncle Creon takes the crown. Creon honours Eteoclesis, but because Polynices fought against Thebes the King orders him to be publicly shamed, and for his body not be buried but left to rot on the blooded battlefield.

The play follows the avowal of their sister Antigone to bury the body of Polynices despite Creon’s ruling that anyone doing so will be executed. And thereby hangs the tale.

The audience is required to descend deep into the bowels of The State Theatre Company, to see Antigone. They enter a huge space rather like a public square, in the middle of which is a two-tiered low dais, its pale wooden structure, warmly lit, giving it an attraction that belies the sorrowful tale it will tell. Lounging around the dais, representing the ubiquitous Greek chorus, unsmiling and watchful, are men and women dressed in black suits and white T-shirts. A cascade of light musical notes fills the room.

As the audience waits, the music abruptly stops and the chorus jump up yelling and raising their arms, then stomping their feet, Zorba-like in a heavy-booted rhythm. Into their midst come the two warring brothers.

As you would expect from such master craftsmen as Donnellan and Ormerod, it’s an electric start The story is then driven forward by clever exploitation of the small stage and involving the audience around it as part of the citizenship. Along the way the motives of the protagonists are exposed.

Trying to justify their actions are Antigone (Monique Mitchell), her sister Ismene (Rosalili Ford), Creon (Ryan Tierney), his wife Eurydice (Denli Chavez), his son Haemon (Hank Harris), and the blind prophet Teiresias (Pippin Carroll) whose sound advice will go unheeded. The seven-part brilliant chorus relentlessly moves through the audience, at times scaring the life out of it through the sheer incantatory potency of their delivery.

Mitchell, in red shirt and jeans, has a resemblance to Greta Thunberg in her obstinate demeanour. She is blessed with a lovely clarity and nuance of voice and knows how to use it to summon up its power for climactic impact. The yearning delivery of her last speech beginning “My final walk in the sun.. death takes me by the hand and leads me … is heart rending.”

Tierney has star quality. He’s one of those actors who can make his body respond to the most compelling demands, as here, when he is torn asunder, disordered, railing and groaning at the sight of the bodies of his wife and son. Before this inevitable tragedy, at the height of his powers, he wears, tellingly, a suit, shirt and the ubiquitous red tie. When furiously hitting back at the criticism of his actions, he’s the image of one of our present day warmongering and self-righteous world leaders. 

The graduating actors endow this Antigone with an emotional truth that reverberates with you as you leave the theatre. It’s hard not to equate what you have seen with the events happening in this despot-run, war-some world we have to live in. The chauvinism, callousness, and hubris of many of those in power is second nature to the spirit of our times. 

As a welcome corollary Antigone’s brave defiance is now reflected in women such as Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai and Leshia Evans. I would add Kathy Lett to that list – humour is a great weapon too. Oh, and although a man – Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Bravo to WAAPA, its students in all their onstage and offstage roles and Donnellan and Ormerod. The drama of this one hour 15 minute adaptation of Sophocles’ ageless play is vividly presented and the actors were fully in charge.