Ancient Greece meets modern Scotland in a highly charged and explosive piece of exciting theatre.
Like a breath of fresh air, young award-winning writer Lulu Raczka has turned Greek tragedian Sophocle’s famous work, Antigone, into a slick, powerful drama performed by Glasgow’s Tron Theatre Company in conjunction with Groupwork.
And it works brilliantly. Gone are the white marble and pillars and instead there is a modern, claustrophobic Scottish living room and plush teenage sanctuary with pretty wallpaper and colourful fairy lights.
Designer Milla Clarke has created a set far from the ancient myth’s sprawling courtyards, but which still represents a safe sanctuary from the brutality of the civil war raging outside.
In making it modern, Raczka has chosen to skip Sophocle’s male characters to centre instead on the female experience of two sisters on the brink of womanhood.
Antigone (Eilidh Loan) and Ismene (Holly Howden Gilchrist) are the daughters of Oedipus, who unknowingly married his own mother and brought shame and scandal on the family. When Oedipus dies his two sons fight for power and kill each other in battle and their uncle becomes the new king.
One is hailed a hero, the other a traitor and left unburied on the king’s orders. But Antigone is determined to bury him anyway and Ismene tries to reason with her about the dangers of meddling into the unknown.
The two actors brilliantly bring the modern day into life. Loan uses all her energy to play the highly charged Antigone, zooming around the room erratically, madly encouraging her quieter sister to drink and live out her fantasies.
Howden Gilchrist is more pragmatic, and she tries to calm the situation with reasoning and tenderness. But the sisters fight with passion and its testament to the creativeness of movement director Vicki Manderson that there is a real sense of a physical battle.
The darkness of the play comes to light with Lewis den Hertog’s video of Antigone burying her brother, again adding a modern way of highlighting the intensity.
And the slowness of the aftermath sees Ismene battle on as she tries to come to terms with what her sister did and torments herself, questioning if she could have done what Antigone did.
The 95 minute play, directed by Finn den Hertog, is without an interval which makes it very intense. But the slow burn is worth it as the story unravels into a heartbreaking and tender tale of family love.
Antigone runs at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow until Saturday 10th October 2026 with tickets available from: www.tron.co.uk.
Author Bio:
Rebecca Hay is an experienced travel writer and member of The British Guild of Travel Writers. Follow her adventures with her family on Twitter and Instagram @emojiadventurer and on Facebook via EmojiAdventurers2.
Photograph by Mihaela Bodlovic
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