Courtesy of Onassis Cultural Center New York. Photos by Beowulf Sheehan

                               by Deirdre Donovan

If you want to get a firm handle on Sophocles’ Antigone, look no further than Lena Kitsopoulou’s Antigone: Lonely Planet.  Kitsopoulou wrote, directed, and performed in her new play, specially commissioned for the Antigone Now Festival at the Gallery at Olympic Tower.  Performed in Greek with English supertitles, it is not a new take on the ancient play but a profound meditation on the iconic Antigone, a teenager who went against the grain and followed the dictates of her conscience.

 

You know the story:  Antigone is forbidden by Creon to bury her brother Polynices.  But instead of bowing to his law, she challenges the state and during her trial, she learns that her cri de coeur is heard near and far.  Still, the state persists in the prosecution of Antigone, and she is punished by death. 

 

At first blush, Antigone: Lonely Planet seemed totally unrelated to the Antigone myth.  The prologue to the play began with four performers—Kitsopoulou, Sofia Kokkali, Themis Panou, and Anastasios Samaras--in full ski gear, clattering into the Gallery and awkwardly taking their places at a conference table, replete with microphones and water bottles. The group of skiers, much like a modern-day chorus, pointedly commented on Antigone’s extreme choice and tragic situation.  They dissected her political naiveté, her need for personal affirmation, and her deep sense of being morally right. 

 

 

While the group thoroughly parsed the myth, they also added events from their own individual lives that resonated with the iconic Antigone and her tragic dilemma.  The most memorable tale by far was told by one female skier who found herself pregnant while she was training for an important skiing competition.  Determined to remain in the competition, she did an abortion on herself with a ski pole.  And, not only did she describe the particulars of the messy procedure, she graphically re-enacted it on stage. 

 

 

Enough gore for one production?  Not a chance.  At the play’s dead center, a male skier told about his grisly encounter with a polar bear.  And as he began to recount the details of the wild experience, an actor dressed in a polar bear costume quietly entered the performing space.  Spoiler alert!  This fake polar bear who stalked the skiers during the second half of the play would be compared pointedly to a principal in Sophocles’ Antigone.  And I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what dramatic character this polar bear is supposed to represent and what it aimed to do to one of the skiers.

 

The acting?  It was solid, a true ensemble piece, where no actor tried to upstage each other.  That is, except for the performer in the polar bear outfit who intermittently lurked behind the conference table, infusing a real sense of danger into the goings-on.  No question that this creature stole every scene it was in—and added gallons of suspense.

 

Although the play’s dominant theme is loneliness, Kitsopoulou also tossed in other key themes like madness and freedom.  One skier, in fact, argued that Antigone was a “skier of life” who simply took the slope less traveled.  Another chimed in that Antigone was in search of freedom and didn’t want to be ruled by a monster like Creon.  In any case, all the skiers voiced their honest opinions, like guests on a reality TV show aired in Greece.

 

The show isn’t flawless!  There’s too much padding in the opening scenes, in which the four skiers acknowledge their sponsors (The Onassis Festival New York) and speak about their red carpet treatment in the Big Apple. Why are the skiers giving such excessive attention to their sponsors when they should be focused on the subject of Antigone and Greek tragedy.  Their opening comments don’t add a whiff to the play’s substance and could be excised from the script altogether.  The second drawback is that Antigone: Lonely Planet came and went like a lightning flash from Mount Parnassus.  As part of the four-day free Antigone Now Festival at Olympic Tower, it deserved to be seen by a larger audience.

 

That said, one can only hope that the play will surface again in a post-festival production.  The tidal pull of Sophocles’ Antigone strongly exerted itself in Kitsopoulou’s new play.  And though it clocked in at just 60 minutes, it really packed an emotional punch.

 

One performance only on October 15th.

At the Olympic Tower (at the Gallery), 645 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan.

For more information on the Antigone Now Festival, visit www.onassisfestivalny.org

Running time:  one hour with no intermission.