Unfaithful 'Antigone'
|
Company members mentioned in this article: Heidi Stillman, Rick Sims and Philip R Smith by Jack Helbig On any given day, there are dozens being done around the globe, faithful productions that try to reproduce the look and feel of the original. And not-so-faithful versions resetting the characters or the setting or twisting the story to fit someone else's agenda. "Hillbilly Antigone," Lookingglass Theatre's sometimes wonderful latest offering, is, as the title suggests, one of those not-so-faithful versions. Set back in the hills among people not unlike those who populate the Ma and Pa Kettle movies or Li'l Abner and featuring a trio of bluegrass playing musicians who act as de facto narrators, this version couldn't look less like a drama from fifth-century B.C. Athens if it tried. Yet, at its heart, this version, written by Rick Sims and Heidi Stillman, remains faithful to the spirit of the original story. At the center is a struggle between a vocal righteous young person and an inflexible older authority figure. This battle between youth and age probably accounts for the play's international popularity. It certainly accounts for much of the wattage in this production. That's because Stillman, in directing her own work, cast a pair of strong actors in the roles of Antigone and Creon, the man she is rebelling against. As Antigone, Mattie Hawkinson has fire and grit and an iron-willed integrity that makes one both admire her and fear for her safety. Her will to do right is often much stronger than her sense of self-preservation. In this version she is one of the saner members of the gun-toting Flick clan, a clan that for some reason has set itself against both the powers that be, as represented by Judge Creon, and a railroad company trying to lay tracks through their land. Lookingglass founding member Philip R. Smith plays Judge Creon, and this tall, strong-voiced actor has rarely looked or sounded so right for a part. As Creon, Smith must both convey a sense of credible authority (he is, after all, a popular judge and a preacher man) and slightly over-the-top stubbornness that proves his undoing. Smith conveys both with an easy mastery that wins us over the moment he enters a scene. When Hawkinson and Smith square off, there is a palpable tension in the room. Every pause in the dialogue and every gesture speaks volumes. And we truly care what happens to both of these larger-than-life characters. The adaptation itself is, sadly, more uneven than the performances. Actually, the word adaptation doesn't begin to convey how much Sims and Stillman changed Sophocles' story. They have essentially told a whole new story with characters (and a few plot twists) borrowed from the original. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, Sims and Stillman's tale is, in many ways, more entertaining and accessible to modern audiences than Sophocles' play. This despite the fact that sections of the evening don't feel like they have jelled yet. For one, the tone of the evening is all over the place. Sometimes the story is told straight, sometimes the play is studded with comic bits. Sometimes we are asked to laugh at the characters, sometimes with them. For another, Sims' score (he wrote all the music and lyrics in the show) doesn't quite live up to the promise in the press hype. Sims' songs are described in a program note as having been inspired by the work of the Carter family. They may have been, but these easily forgotten tunes and lyrics have a long way to go to equal the power of those country music pioneers. The songs are not bad. In fact, some are superb, but all of them are very forgettable. Likewise, the staging seems a little rough at times, as if the actors had not rehearsed enough before opening, or Stillman had only given the cast a vague idea of what to do on stage. But even with its minor flaws, this show remains, like much of what Lookingglass creates, inventive and daring. What other theater would create a show that demands that some members of the cast take music lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music? And what other ensemble other than the Lookingglass would exit those lessons playing as expertly as Sims, Andrew White and Christine Mary Dunford, the three actors-turned-bluegrass-musicians who tell the story? Finally, what other company would take a show with a title that is both exploitative and potentially insulting to poor white people and turn out something that is both free of the usual hillbilly stereotypes yet contains enough backwoods local color to be believable? No, the show is not perfect. But what is there is highly entertaining and very watchable. |
