Antigone Unbound based on Sophocles Antigone
Devised and performed by Lesley Ewen, Billy Marchenski, and Tanya Marquardt
and directed by Stephen Hill
Leaky Heaven Studio above the Russian Hall
Leaky Heaven Circus
May 13 to 24, 2009
Vancouver, BC: One never knows quite what to expect in a production by this interesting group of artists, and this time was no exception. Climbing up the stairs to the performance space, I enter a small somewhat claustrophobic room. A narrow platform next to the walls runs round the room leaving a central square pit in which swivel office chairs are haphazardly crammed. We take two seats at the back of the room just in front of the stage manager's table and watch as the place fills up rapidly. It is warm and stuffy but there is a buzz in the air.
I am intrigued to see what they will do with Sophocles' tragic heroine. The back legend goes like this: Antigone, her sister Ismene, and her brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, are the children of the unknowingly incestous marriage of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. When the truth is disovered Oedipus blinds himself after Jocasta kills herself. As heirs to the throne the two brothers agree to alternate as ruler. The older Eteocles however declines to let Polyneices take his turn and Polyneices promptly heads off to Argos, marries the King's daughter and returns with an army to take Thebes by storm. Both brothers die in battle, and Creon, Jocasta's brother, takes over as king of Thebes. He decrees that Eteocles should be buried with full honours, but that the body of Polyneices, whom he considers a traitor, must be left to rot unburied, thus denying him entrance to the land of the dead.
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