Off-Broadway Reviews: Antigone (This Play I Read in High School); Marcel on the Train

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Susannah Perkins
in Antigone (This Play I Read in High School).
Credit: Joan Marcus

There have been numerous attempts at updating Greek tragedy. This season alone the tale of Oedipus has seen a new modern version from Robert Icke and a revival of the gospel musical adaptation. Anna Ziegler has taken on the shattering narrative of Oedipus’ equally benighted daughter Antigone in a searing retelling through a modern lens. Subtitled (This Play I Read in High School), this Antigone is still a devastating portrait of female defiance of male oppression but goes several steps further. 

In Sophocles’ original, Antigone is condemned to death for giving her brother a decent burial in defiance of the king, her uncle Creon who wants the body to be left to the vultures for political reasons. In Ziegler’s skillful melding of myth and modern issues, the heroine is to be killed by the state for having an abortion. This is a chillingly relevant adjustment since so many states have made such an operation illegal since the overturning of Roe V. Wade and some have gone so far as to equate abortion with homicide, punishable by lengthy prison sentences. (The state of Tennessee just unsuccessfully attempted to make execution the penalty.) How many Antigones are there in America today?

Ziegler answers that query by combining a contemporary woman’s story with a version of the original that takes place simultaneously in the past and the present. Celia Keenan-Bolger compassionately plays the Chorus who interweaves her 2026 story of an unwanted pregnancy with Antigone’s tale after meeting a punky, self-possessed teenager (the magnificently spiky Susannah Perkins) who happens to reading the play across the aisle from her on an airplane. We then travel to a Thebes not unlike our contemporary society where the new king Creon (a searingly self-doubting Tony Shalhoub) strives to bring rigid order to the moral chaos left behind by his predecessor Oedipus, who had unwittingly married his own mother. 

Tony Shalhoub, Celia Keenan-Bolger,
and Katie Kreisler in Antigone (This Play
I Read in High School).
Credit: Joan Maruc

In Ziegler’s version, Creon imposes draconian laws against abortion just as Antigone (Perkins again) realizes she is with child and has no desire to carry on her tragedy-drenched line. The playwright artfully sets in motion the debate between female autonomy and unbending male-dominated morality. In the most striking and effective scene, Antigone argues with Creon for her right to bodily self-determine as she strips down, literally bearing herself in defiance of Creon’s aggression. The king meanwhile maintains strict morality must be enforced for social order. Perkins and Shalhoub brilliantly put forth both sides of the argument. Shalhoub is especially effective depicting Creon’s anguished struggle to take on the reigns of power though he doesn’t really want them. In a heart-wrenching performance, Keenan-Bolger intersperses the Chorus’ moving story throughout Antigone’s. Director Tyne Rafaeli superbly paces the staging between the two timelines and balances Ziegler’s satiric moments with the deadly serious ones.

Susannah Perkins and Calvin Leon Smith
in Antigone (This Play I Read in High School).
Credit: Joan Marcus

Calvin Leon Smith brings depth to Antigone’s conflicted fiance and cousin Haemon as does Haley Wong to her seemingly shallow sister Ismene. Katie Kreisler, Dave Quay and Ethan Dubin are memorable as three comic palace guards and in other roles. David Zinn’s sets and Enver Chakartash’s costumes combine elements of the classic and contemporary as does Ziegler’s compassionate and thought-provoking adaptation.

Classic Stage Company is also presenting an interesting hybrid of forms. Marshall Pailet and Ethan Slater’s Marcel on the Train mixes mime and clowning performance with a traditional narrative for a compelling stage thriller. Based the true experiences of renowned silent performance artist Marcel Marceau, the play depicts young Marceau’s harrowing journey accompanying four Jewish orphans out of Nazi-occupied France into neutral Switzerland. Directed by Pailet with inventive grace with the elastic-limbed Slater brilliantly pliant and passionate in the title role, Marcel is a first-class train ride. Studio Luna’s evocative lighting transforms Scott Davis’ suggestive railway car into many frightening and evocative environments. 

Ethan Slater and Maddie Corman in
Marcel on the Train.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

My only caveat is the otherwise proficient adult actors playing the kids (Alex Wyse, Maddie Corman, Max Gordon Moore and Tedra Millan) are not entirely convincing as 12-year-olds. Once too often they seem wiser than Marcel even though the script often calls for them to declare to him, “We’re only children! You lead us!” Aaron Serotsky juggles several roles as “Everyone Else” and is particularly chilling as a French soldier working for the Germans whose loyalties are not immediately apparent.

Antigone (This Play I Read in High School): March 11—April 5. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 20 mins. including intermission. publictheater.org.

Marcel on the Train: Feb. 22—March 22. Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St., NYC. Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission. classicstage.org.

Maddie Corman, Ethan Slater, Max Gordon Moore
and Alex Wyse in Marcel on the Train.
Credit: Emilio Madrid