Time travelling

When should you set Antigone? Apparently not in the time of Antigone. The greatest classics these days seem to be aimed at the stupidest ticket-holders. And these hapless wretches can’t possibly be expected to understand anything outside their immediate experience.

Polly Findlay’s version of Sophocles’ tragedy doesn’t even get modernity right. Her slightly out-of-date set design includes antique reel-to-reel tape machines and hefty old photocopiers the size of freezers. She’s taken Thebes and transplanted it to the studio of Crimewatch UK in about 1994. Very odd. The usual justification for these fast-forwardings is that they add relevance. They also close down curiosity and exempt directors from conducting the sort of research which, one imagines, they’d be eager to perform. But no, rather than finding out what ancient Thebans wore and how they conducted themselves, Findlay dumps the show in an open-plan glass office and lets the incongruities flourish.