Larry Littany Litt
Antigone in Analysis By Barbara Barclay Barbara Barclay claims to have had mother problems. So what better way to work them out than writing a hilarious travesty about an ancient Theban family and their attempts at some kind of sanity perhaps leading to normalcy. Let me clue you in. A ‘travesty’ is by definition a burlesque translation or literary or artistic imitation usually grotesquely incongruous in style, treatment, or subject matter. Like in the Oxford theater clubs that spawned Monty Python’s Flying Circus that still rules the world of television and stage comedy. Yes this is a travesty in the best possible way. We open with Antigone desperately wanting to perform funeral rites for her newly dead brother. This desire is what drives the action. She has been forbidden to perform any ritual or cleaning of the body of Polynices. Barclay supplants King Creon with Jocasta, regally played by the beautiful Bianca Leigh, as the new king/queen of Thebes. She’s a stickler for formal social order. She’s also cursed with the marriage to her son Oedipus. Alessandra Lopez’ frustrated and angry Antigone is not a happy daughter. In fact she is feeling lots of ‘mother-hate.’ Enter the analysts and philosophers of academic study who have gathered in a salon to discuss the meaning of the play. You have to know who they are to appreciate their place in this family. Soren Kierkegaard, ably played as a churchly nerd by Simon Henriques, is a very Christian religious philosopher who antagonizes the others with his orthodoxy. He hates their atheism. Kierkegaard’s prime antagonist is Jacques Lacan, obnoxiously played to the hilt by Sammy Rivas. Their combined antics motivates Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, parodied by Mick Hilgers, to announce the positive and negative sides of the reign of a woman king. Luce Irigaray is a renowned strident feminist acted to perfection by Nomi Tichman whose blind Tiresias is one of this play’s highest didactic moments. It’s Jocasta and Antigone that give this dramedy its cruelest ark. How can a mother hate a child just because she is the offspring of a husband who was her own child? Is that a good reason to kill your daughter? Judith Butler adamantly says ‘No. A woman should have compassion. We aren’t like men.’ Actor Linnea Scott had me rolling on the floor. She puts up a grandly silly but potent argument as do all our philosophers and psychologists. No, It’s not good enough. Jocasta wants Antigone dead for breaking the burial laws. They demean each other in the cruelest language. The experts comment on law, ethics and morality. It doesn’t end well for the family. It’s a travesty. |
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