★★★✰✰
A flexing hand. A captive audience. ‘Antigone, Interrupted’ is as obsessed as the Ancient Greeks with the power of the image and the power of the audience. In the process, some clarity is lost, and though the production is held together by the incredible talent of solo performer Solène Weinachter, eventually the feeling is one of an anti-climax.
Purportedly telling the story of Greek tragic heroine Antigone, the production is interspersed with details from Weinachter’s (or perhaps writer, director and choreographer Joan Clevillé’s) life that pertain to Antigone or to the conventions of Greek tragedy. In this way, alongside her death, Antigone is interrupted. The only question is: why? These interruptions added little, except some brief and welcome moments of humour, and instead distracted from the emotional power of the story. However, when these interruptions are used to engage the audience as a kind of Greek chorus/friend/fellow performer, they gain much greater impact. We are brought into sync with Weinachter, Antigone and with our Greek forebears: a technique that elevates the drama into ritual.
Nevertheless, some of the production choices are puzzling. The choice to represent the chorus through distorted vocalised effects is at first clever, highlighting their distance from Antigone and lack of personhood, but mean that much of their dialogue is lost, leaving the audience to fill in the gaps when we can once again hear what is being said. Some movement sequences are regrettably overlong, meaning that potent images are distilled into endless repetition. Does this offer us much time to reflect? Yes, and many beautiful meanings emerge in doing so: the animalism of both love and grief, the self-congratulation of Creon, the representation of torture in a single body. But we can gain these meanings in shorter bursts: sometimes the movement strays towards self-indulgence.
None of this can distract from the sheer talent of Weinachter. She is the complete package: a hypnotic, extraordinarily talented performer who holds the audience in the palm of her hand for an hour and ten minutes with barely any breaks. Her control over her body is extraordinary, as is her ability to completely embody different characters often within the space of a line. She is also very funny and a talented dramatic performer, so much so that you sometimes want a tad more drama and a tad less dance. But watching her shape her body into that of an animal, or a mocking chorus, or a prancing king is genuinely thrilling: this is what dance theatre is all about.
Antigone, Interrupted is both fantastic and flawed. Playing with notions of the body in politics, death and gender, the role of the chorus and the performer, it offers a fresh take on the Ancient Greek tragedy. Although some production choices leave the text as less than the sum of its parts, the ritual aspects and amazing power of Weinachter as a performer leave it as a testament to the power of dance and drama.
‘Antigone, Interrupted’ is showing from 17th August to 28th August at Dance Base, as a part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Words by Issy Flower
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