Antigone (On Strike) is a play which loosely maps the narrative of Antigone onto a fictionalised version of the Shamima Begum case
Antigone (On Strike) is not an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone so much as a play which loosely maps the narrative of Antigone onto a fictionalised version of the Shamima Begum case. And it is not a bad idea. Unfortunately, it fails in its execution.
The success of this play is in its corralling ability to engage. You are presented with a keypad upon entry, which is used throughout the vote on the questions presented intermittently. A note on these keypads: whilst commendable in its means of audience participation, it was let down a little by the use of a PowerPoint presentation, negating the possibility that our answers were actually being counted in real time.
However, director Alexander Raptotasios’ focus on involving the audience aids engagement with the subject matter. The questions are a constant throughout this play, demanding you take part in the moral dilemmas that make fateful demands on the characters. For 90 minutes, you must actively consider issues of human rights, political responsibility, the exploitation of young women, and more. And this is what recommends Antigone (On Strike). Islamophobia, and especially the case of Shamima Begum, is uncomfortable for the British public; it presses firmly on personal and political biases that are painful to investigate. By involving with audience in such multi-media terms, Raptotasios undertakes the difficult task of making you engage and consider these issues successfully. Though the message being communicated remains unclear.
And this is where Antigone (On Strike)’s success begins and ends. If theatre is going to continue luring the girlies in with promise of Ancient Greek Tragedy – especially of the rageful woman variety – they have got to do more thorough research. Raptotasios picks and choose from Sophocles’ Antigone, neglecting all the crucial components that make it Antigone – as laid out in Aristotle’s Poetics. In the transferral of Theban political strife onto British, Antigone is Antiya (Hiba Medina), her sister – who left England to join ISIS, aged 14 – is Esmeh (from Ismene, played by Hanna Khogali), and so on. This is largely where the resemblance ends.
This is why the production fails by its appropriation of Sophocles’ Antigone:
In this production, Tiresias – the blind prophet, who warns Creon (here, the king is Creighton, the Home Secretary) of his fateful hubris and judgement – is a sort of unclear AI. Ty the AI makes predictions based off online data to project likely outcomes of political action. Whilst it’s an interesting interpretation of the role of Tiresias, it fails to understand the fundamental function of Tiresias in Greek drama. Tiresias is blind: facts and data are not his domain. Rather, he is the embodiment of fate, and the will of the gods; he occupies the realm of the soul; the intangible; he is a moral arbiter who warns Creon of his impending hubristic doom. Here, Ty is devoid of psychological insight, and functions merely as a technological aid, thereby undermining the impact his predictions carry
Secondly, Antigone is a tragic hero, as laid out by Aristotle. The tragedy of her role depends upon the inevitability of her tragic fate and fatal flaw. Whilst Antiya’s loyalty to her family, against loyalty to her country, remains her hamartia, in this version, it feels too simplistic. I would also argue that a hunger strike with attention existing purely on social and online media is a weak interpretation of Antigone’s hamartia and tragic fall, no matter how justified and morally admirable she is. This wasn’t helped by mediocre writing and consequentially, the acting suffered from a lack of nuance.
Finally, Greek Tragedy lives and dies on the hill of the spectacle of theatre: on the feeling of ‘having gone to the theatre’ and been emotionally purged. In the absence of distinct, plausible characters, relationships, or story, this was a piece that relied on the grandeur of Ancient Greek Tragedy but understood very little of it. It thus left the drastic melodrama of the ending baffling as opposed to moving.