REVIEW: Antigone - La Boite Theatre

Cast: Maddison Burridge, Billy Fogarty, Hayden Spencer

Playwright: Sophocles

Co-Directors: Courtney Stewart & Nigel Poulton

Dramaturgy: Courtney Stewart & Brady Watkins

Set & Costume Designer: Josh McIntosh

Composer & Sound Designer: Brady Watkins

Lighting Designer: Teegan Kranenburg

Photography: Dean Hanson Photography / Jacqueline Bawtree

“No man can foretell his fate.”

More than two millennia after it was first written, Sophocles’ Antigone still speaks with unsettling timeliness. In La Boite Theatre’s striking new staging, co-directors Courtney Stewart and Nigel Poulton have crafted a production that explores authoritarianism, defiance, grief and the dangerous rigidity of single-minded convictions. It is theatre that asks its audience to listen carefully, think deeply, and confront the consequences directly.

The play unfolds in the immediate aftermath of a civil war. Antigone’s brothers, the princes Polyneices and Eteocles, have killed each other in battle, leaving their city of Thebes fractured. These fallen princes are henceforth embodied through cloak and helm. The newly crowned king, Creon — Antigone’s uncle — declares one a hero deserving burial and the other a traitor condemned to rot unburied as a warning to the state. What follows is not merely a family dispute, but a collision of principles. Even for audiences unfamiliar with Greek tragedy, the central conflicts are immediately clear and strikingly recognisable today: loyalty versus law, conscience versus authority, the will of the people against the pride of the ruler.

The directors frame this ancient dilemma through a highly physical theatrical language that draws on Poulton's action-based performance practice. In this world, the body is never neutral. Characters move continuously through the roundhouse space in shifting choreographic patterns. Bodies crouch, crawl, bow, rise and fall across the levels of the set, embodying the forces that constrain and compel them.

The visual world of the production is striking in its clarity and symbolism. At the centre of the stage sits a circular platform carved with a shallow, sunken grave. Josh McIntosh’s set design features a pale stone surface etched with fissures that evoke ancient marble, while the vertical layers glow with warm clay tones. The design creates the impression of an arena — part burial site, part civic forum — where private grief and public judgement collide.

A raised walkway and stepped platforms extend from the circle, allowing characters to ascend above the action or descend toward the grave. From a narrow opening above, dusty pebbles periodically rain down into the pit. The roundhouse seating reinforces the production’s themes of public debate, with characters frequently addressing the audience directly as though speaking before a civic assembly. The audience becomes witness, jury and citizen all at once.

Suspended above the stage, a ring of lighting reflects the circular shape below, casting cool blue washes and sharp spotlights that isolate characters in moments of confrontation or reflection. Teegan Kranenburg’s lighting design heightens this effect, especially in the electrifying appearance of the blind prophet Teiresias, where sharp strobe moments fracture the space in flashes of foreboding.

The costumes, also designed by Josh McIntosh, perfectly align with the production’s “modern myth” aesthetic — one particularly committed audience member even arriving in a toga on opening night. The flowing silhouettes and soft, neutral fabrics reflect the drapery of ancient Greece, yet maintain a contemporary style in their cut and transparency. Hayden Spencer’s Creon sports a tailored vest decorated with a medal, evoking modern military authority and political clout.

The soundscape by Brady Watkins is particularly effective, layering heartbeats, rumblings, distant screams and choral textures that echo through the theatre. These moments often feel like the pulse of the story itself, amplifying the tension between the human and the mythic. Transitions are underscored by voiceovers of Sophocles’ words, grounding the production firmly in its classical origins even as the staging speaks in a contemporary theatrical language.

The ensemble of three is a mighty force. At the forefront stands the sensational Maddison Burridge as Antigone. She brings composure and emotional depth to Antigone’s grief, love, and fierce moral conviction. Antigone’s defiance does not stem from stubbornness but from an unwavering sense of justice, and Burridge allows that humanity to shine through the text’s formal language. Her declaration, “Our work is never finished. Our tears never dry,” resonates with a haunting impact.

Billy Fogarty moves fluidly between roles as Ismene, Haimon, Teiresias and the Sentry, demonstrating remarkable versatility. As Ismene, they convey the tension between loyalty and fear with sensitivity, while their turn as the bumbling Sentry provides flashes of comic relief. The Sentry's nervous, long-winded attempts to report to the king are played with deliberate hilarity. As Haimon, however, Fogarty delivers one of the evening’s most compelling exchanges opposite Creon, arguing passionately for logic and the voice of the people. Their confrontation becomes a heated debate between generational reason and authoritarian certainty.

Hayden Spencer commands the stage with a Creon whose authority and pride are felt in every word. He knows he does not need to overplay dominance; it is embedded in his person and vocal precision. He spits out the words “woman” or “girl” with palpable disdain; you can almost see the misogyny dripping off his tongue. Antigone in turn responds with equal bitterness when mentioning “men,” underlining the play’s inherent battle of the sexes. Spencer also finds flashes of dark humour within Creon’s demeanour, often in a mocking tone.

The production’s dramaturgy, credited to Courtney Stewart and Brady Watkins, draws thoughtful connections between Sophocles’ text and the contemporary world. At one point Antigone sheds her mythical origins to speak directly to our modern challenges, naming women across the globe who continue to pursue justice and dignity today. It is a reminder that Antigone is not a singular figure of the past but one voice in a long line of resistance since.

The language of Sophocles is intricate and philosophical, and the production refrains from simplifying its intellectual complexity. Instead, it trusts the audience to engage. For seventy focused minutes, the play asks for attention, patience and thoughtfulness, and rewards it with moments of startling stagecraft. The questions posed by Antigone remain painfully familiar. What happens when leaders equate disagreement with disloyalty? When pride outweighs compassion? As one line reminds us, “All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong… the only crime is pride.”

La Boite’s production does not offer easy answers. Instead, it invites audiences to sit within the complexity of opposing truths. In doing so, it demonstrates why this ancient tragedy continues to resonate across millennia: because the struggle between authority and conscience is never truly resolved. In this powerful staging, Sophocles’ tragic story feels less like a relic of the past and more like a mirror held up to the present.