Playwright: Rick Sims
( book, music, lyrics )
At: Lookingglass Theatre Company
Phone: ( 312 ) 337-0665: $20-$58
Runs through: July 10
Classics professors beware. In adapting Sophocles' ancient tragedy, Antigone, to 1920s Tennessee, Rick Sims and Heidi Stillman have taken immense liberties. They make Antigone and Harmon ( the original's Haemon ) not only lovers but, unknowingly, siblings. They twist Creon from principal victim of his family's ancient blood curse into a murderous clan leader, politician and hypocrite who willfully exploits his family. They introduce Antigone's mother as an important character. They end with Antigone alive and Creon dead.
Above all, Sims and Stillman ( who also directed ) make Antigone funny. It's not Hee-Haw, but there are whiffs of L'il Abner and Tobacco Road here, especially in the comic scenes of Antigone's family. The authors take the imagistic exaggeration common to bluegrass song lyrics and apply it to the entire show, broadly speaking. If you're a literary purist, this Antigone definitely is not for you. However, if you will judge this Antigone for what it is, accepting or rejecting it on its own merits, you may find it captivating, freshly conceived, beautifully executed and vastly entertaining.
Sims' most brilliant conception is transforming the traditional Greek chorus into a bluegrass trio, chugging through a dozen Sims tunes written in traditional 'Carter Family' ( as in June Carter Cash and her parents ) style, played on guitar, steel guitar and autoharp. The trio cooks in ballad, gospel or clogging mode as Sims' often-wry lyrics provide not only narrative steam but also commentary in true antique Greek fashion.
The next sharp decision is that Stillman and her design team create the work within a large shadowbox, framed by painted scenes from the show executed in primitive carnival banner style. The persistent theatricality, the self-aware ballyhoo, are reminders that like Greek tragedy, this is a work of the poet not the pretense of real life. This Antigone is a pageant, a Chautauqua to horrify, edify and entertain its viewers ... and it does!
The lead performances all are strong. Towering Philip R. Smith, draped in black as Creon, channels Johnny Cash and Elmer Gantry in his turn to the Dark Side. Mattie Hawkinson's Antigone combines wistful down-home gal with toughness. Matt Ziegler is a handsome, winsome Harmon. Tracy Walsh is feisty as Antigone's mom, a woman wronged who dominates the consequences. There's colorful character work from Lawrence E. DiStasi and Keith Kupferer.
Yes, I have reservations. The story is diminished from its Greek forebear, despite this often-charming and always imaginative production. Changing Creon from tragic hero to villain is, essentially, a mistake. And, yes, Hillbilly Antigone perpetuates every Appalachian stereotype. But I'm convinced the show's comedy laughs WITH the stereotypes and not AT them, an important difference.
Hillbilly Antigone recollects the biblical quote borrowed in the title of another show set in Tennessee, in which spiritual and secular forces clash: 'He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.'