The play by Sophocles starkly poses the dilemma faced when the laws of the land force people to choose between doing what is right and doing what is legal. In this case, Oedipus’s successor Creon has decreed that Antigone’s brother Polynices cannot be buried – leveling a terrible punishment where his spirit will not find rest in the underworld. But Antigone, a daughter of Oedipus and Oedipus’s wife/mother, is determined to bury her brother even though such an act will bring about her own death. She argues to her horrified sister Ismene (Morgan Trant) and to Creon that loyalty to her family and the gods outweighs the commands of mortal kings, and since she will be spending more time with the dead than with the living, it would be far better to offend the living than the dead.

Jennifer Eve Kraus plays Antigone, her performance nicely blending the psyche of a resolute champion of right over might with that of an impulsive young woman who doesn’t fully realize her life could truly end with her hostile defiance until it is too late. Dale Morris is the arrogant, grinning Creon who is clearly relishing his newfound power, turning dramatically harsh when that power and his wisdom is questioned by Antigone and her fiancé, Creon’s own son Haemon (Mark Broadnax). Antigone and Creon’s open antagonism toward each other seals both their fates, with Antigone feeling the terror of her mortality when Creon sends her to her death, and the arrogant Creon trembling in fear when the prophet Teiresias (a riveting and harrowing cameo by Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson) predicts his family’s doom.

Production runs through May 8, 2005.

Rob Hopper
San Diego Playbill