Marcela Lorca's Guthrie production hearkens to the roots of Greek drama, with music, movement and a chorus that both narrates and participates in the tragedy as citizens of Thebes. Yet, recent events make this eternal dialectic as thorny as ever. Our heart lies naturally with Antigone, and Creon does suffer the consequences of his hubris. Antigone, Polyneices' sister, defies the state and pleads for her personal right to honor the rituals of death. King Creon demands that the rebel Polyneices, killed in battle against Thebes, be left to rot in the sun as a symbol of what happens to traitors. These stray thoughts entered the mind in viewing "The Burial at Thebes," Seamus Heaney's adaptation of "Antigone" that opened this weekend at the Guthrie Theater. It is such a simple, yet infinitely complex, proposition. But Antigone would have countered that the man was first a human and that there is "a higher law" than the state law. Our national security might demand such a move. She respects and honors the gods who await him in the underworld "Religion dictates the burial of the dead," she avers to the king, who claims that state security requires the brother's body not be allowed this superstitious rite.Ĭould this be "Antigone," the icon of personal liberty? She sounds like a fanatic, the kind of person who might be inclined to argue that the United States committed murder in assassinating an American citizen living in Yemen. A devoutly religious woman wants nothing more than to bury her brother.
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