Antigone Exits at Chichester Festival Theatre (Minerva Studio) Review
Nina Cassells (centre, as Antigone) with Melody Chikakne Brown, Anushka Chakravarti, Lizzy Watts & Max Bennett in Antigone Exits. Photo: Andy Paradise.
Antigone has inspired hundreds of powerful stage, screen, and literary adaptations that reimagine its themes of civil disobedience, tyranny and moral duty for modern audiences. Sophocles’ Antigone, rebooted here by Nina Segal, is about the eternal conflict between divine, unwritten moral law and man-made secular authority. Segal tries to explore the relevance of the themes to present day personal and world issues with mixed results, but in a seventy minute text that is always interesting, she sometimes seems to be trying to fit the square pegs of contemporary reflections on state autocracy, war, and mortality into Sophoclean round holes.
For those who did not take Greek at school, or are unfamiliar with ancient Greek drama, Antigone (acted here by Nina Cassells) is the daughter of the former king, Oedipus. Her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, killed each other while fighting for control of Thebes. Their uncle Creon (played by Max Bennett) becomes the new king. He orders a full, honourable burial for Eteocles, who defended the city. He bans anyone from burying Polynices, labelling him a traitor and leaving his body unburied on the battlefield. The play is about the brave young woman, Antigone, who defies her king to honour her dead brother.
In this reimagination, with the cast of seven actors in everyday clothes rather than ancient Greek attire, the production breaks format. The performers step away from the narrative to use a centre-stage microphone, linking the ancient themes of state tyranny, mortality, and choice to modern-day tragedies and personal reflections (such as modern conflicts and suicide). The performers make it clear they are performing, sometimes with a wink to the audience, and act as both the principal characters and a Greek chorus. They are first glimpsed sitting together in a large white shell-like construct upstage (set by Alex Lownde) which strikes a powerful picture as a background to the drama.
One of the characters circles the floor of the thrust sage pouring what looks like chocolate sauce as they go, as if indicating a perimeter which the characters cross and re-cross. Sometimes sitting on the outside of this border, sometimes performing within it. I confess I was unclear as to the significance of this encircling performance space. As the play draws to a conclusion with Creon ordering Antigone to her death for disobedience, the liquid boundary is smeared, poured and stains the characters. These were powerful images but to what end? The toxicity of intransigence, the downfall of humanity, or making the pure, impure?
The text of the play is largely verse based and played over a low bass-driven sound and musical soundtrack which does not distract. The writing was elegant, the narrative strong and the verse unforced. However the personal, contemporary, out of character reflections into a centre stage microphone were often touching, though strained and contrived. In particular there is a reference to the current Gaza conflict in which we are told about the death and decomposition of children after the bombing of a Gazan hospital by Israel. Whatever your personal politics I could not see the relevance of this to the underlying dramatic motifs.
This was very much an ensemble show, and all the young company executed their roles with impassioned, evocative and vibrant clarity. Under Jeff James’s focussed and effective direction I was impressed by Cassellis, Iranian American actor Brandon Bassir as Creon’s son Haemon and Melody Chikakne Brown as Tiresias the blind Theban prophet. Very capable performances are given by Lizzie Watts as Eurydice, the Queen of Thebes and wife to King Creon, and Testimony Adegbite as Messenger.
In summary this was an intriguing, and thought-provoking addition to the Antigone myth which does not outstay its welcome, albeit not always successfully contemporising its mythical origins. Well worth a visit though.
★★★★
Written by Stephen for Theatre and Tonic, September 2026.