Antigone by Jean Anouilh

[Jennifer W]

Has anyone else read this gem? I read it in 12th grade English class and could not believe how well I related to Antigone. It was only later that I learned it was meant as a commentary on Vichy France and collaborators. I haven't read it since high school, but I've just ordered a copy. So excited to revisit one of my favs!!

[Jan C]

I think I've only read the one by Sophocles.

[Portia]

Me, too, Jan.

[Nigeyb]

A completely new name for me to investigate. Thanks.

[Charles]

I played the role of Creon in college, and wrote about it some years later. This is what I wrote.

The role is complex. Creon is not a stupid blusterer. He tries to reason pragmatically with the mad-eyed, propriety-driven, purity-obsessed Antigone. Without her moral weight to belie his arguments he would seem a man of sense and good diplomacy, a decent king who has been nearly undone by a traitor. Creon thinks this of himself. What he says to Antigone is spin, half-acknowledged as wise public policy and half self-interested. But under this skin, mostly unbeknownst, is a bitter and cynical man, mean-spirited and egotistical. Not yet corrupt, but soon to be.
So far difficult enough for a young actor, but there is a third layer, available to the actor but not any of the characters, which it is essential to convey.
Anouilh’s play (and Sophocles’ version too, of course) is a tragedy. The tragedy is that of Creon, to which he himself is awakened not by his spite towards the unburied traitor or by the determination of Antigone to break his law despite the consequence of entombment he himself has decreed. It is the suicides of his wife and son and the grief which Creon discovers in himself which could have rescued him. Now it's too late.
None of the characters in the play are to know this outcome beforehand. We do. We know it because we have seen it before and because it is the logic of the drama itself which, once established on this path, must go to the end. And the actor knows it who plays Creon.
This is the third layer. Somehow the actor must convey this foreknowledge and the doom implied without allowing Creon to see what’s up, so that we are privy to the meaning of events as they happen and can judge them truly. It is not because Antigone is right that Creon might be a tragic figure, but the play becomes a tragedy only at the end, in Creon’s shame and remorse.
I don’t know how this was played in Paris in 1944 (something which I should find out but have not) but when I played the role the Vietnam war was just beginning for me. We are accustomed now (some of us are) to see Lyndon Johnson’s Creonic role in this as tragic, but this is a viewpoint we attained only after his death. We felt (some of us felt) at the time a nameless impendance – and it is this which the prescient actor in the role of Creon must convey.
What a task for a boy barely out of his teens who does not understand, who has not knowingly encountered, any of these emotions. Any of this at all.

[Jennifer W]

Jan C wrote: "I think I've only read the one by Sophocles."

Oddly enough, I've never read that version. I should, though. It's be an interesting comparison.

[Jennifer W]

Charles wrote: "I played the role of Creon in college, and wrote about it some years later. This is what I wrote.

The role is complex. Creon is not a stupid blusterer. He tries to reason pragmatically with the ma..."

Great comments. I remember Creon being stuck between agreeing with Antigone but needing to set an example of her. I'll be able to comment further when I reread this.