"Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)"

Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)

Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)
Directed by Tyne Rafaeli
The Public Theater
425 Lafayette St.
Opened March 11,2026
For tickets visit: publictheater.org
Closes April 12, 2026
Reviewed by Paulanne Simmons March 18, 2026

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Anna Ziegler. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Antigone Has a New Problem

Anna Ziegler calls her new drama "Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)." It certainly is not the familiar play we studied. It isn’t even really Antigone.

In Sophocles’ tragedy, written about 441 BC, the heroine gives her traitor brother, Polyneices, a proper funeral, defying her Uncle Creon, king of Thebes. The play’s themes of civil law versus divine law, conscience versus convenience and pride versus justice were important in Sophocles’ world. Athenians were proud of their democratic tradition and would have been troubled by the power of an absolute ruler like Creon.

In Ziegler’s play, directed by Tyne Rafaeli, the conflict centers on Antigone’s decision to have an abortion, despite Creon’s recently enacted law making the procedure illegal. A woman’s autonomy and her right to have control over what happens to her body is a narrower, but nevertheless important issue, although certainly not one that would have concerned Ancient Greece.

The play is narrated by Celia Keenan-Bolger, a one-woman chorus whose personal story is much like Antigone’s, only she is more timid and, in many ways, more likable than the leather-jacketed punk who picks up a guy named Achilles (Ethan Dubin) at a bar instead of going to Creon’s coronation. It is after this escapade that she tells her boyfriend and Creon’s son, Haemon (Calvin Leon Smith), she plans on aborting the baby she has conceived with him.

But the fact that we may not particularly like Antigone is not the only problem in this play. Even plays that are trying to make a political or social comment should present characters that capture our imagination and ignite our sympathy. They should interact on a personal and human level. In this Antigone the characters make speeches. They don’t talk to each other.

Creon (Tony Shalhoub) seems to be mostly musing to himself, like a businessman with a sticky problem he is not qualified to solve. When Haeman proclaims his love for Antigone, she neither listens nor exhibits any affection for him. Antigone and Ismene’s sisterly devotion is mostly a dramatic device.

The language Ziegler uses seems designed to impress us with the writer’s ability to pen colorful, poetic language. But she is no Shakespeare whose poetry flows naturally and meaningfully from his pen. Her images seem empty or forced.

Rafaeli uses light and sound to produce tension that is not present in the play, but there’s not much he can do with the stilted dialogue. At one point Antigone takes off her clothing, slowly and deliberately to show Creon she has a body she will not allow him to govern. Does she think he doesn’t know she has a body? Does she think this will convince him to change his mind? Her uncle’s best response might have been, “Put your clothes back on and stop being a brat.”

Anyone who has read Antigone already knows this version will probably have a tragic ending. But while the conclusion of the original comes with the necessary catharsis, in Ziegler’s version all we can feel is mild concern for Antigone and her older doppelganger who got themselves in trouble in a world that is not kind or fair to young women who aren’t careful.