FringeReview UK 2026
Antigone Exits
Chichester Festival Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, classical, Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre, Tragedy, Translation
Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre Minerva
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
“The kind of woman who would chain herself to railings.” It’s not often that adapting a Greek tragedy with contemporary resonance invokes the Gods to explore catastrophes and genocide now. This though is the core of Nina Segal’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone Exits directed by Jess James at the Chichester Festival’s Minerva Theatre till October 17.
Still a worthwhile exit to Chichester’s season, it ends it in a question-mark.
Review
“The kind of woman who would chain herself to railings.” It’s not often that adapting a Greek tragedy with contemporary resonance invokes the Gods to explore catastrophes and genocide now. This though is the core of Nina Segal’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone Exits directed by Jess James at the Chichester Festival’s Minerva Theatre till October 17.
Segal’s crafted a Janus-faced choric play where seven protagonists also themselves speak “in character” of their experiences as actors (these seem fictive), and about genocide. These fourth-wall moments come in the last third of the play, where the energy, direction and movement by James Cousins comes alive; and elevates an otherwise undernourished adaptation into something blazing with life.
Alex Lowde’s set is stripped back too: a crome-yellow floor is augmented by the interior quartile of a white sphere like an egg: with a slit large enough for someone to slip through, perched above rocks. It’s ritualised, simple and close to the spirit of the original. Jo Joelson’s lighting is pitiless and Kieran Lucas’s sound is undistracting. Most amplification is managed with a mic left centre-stage for protagonists to pick up: a current trend with Greek tragedy.
The consequences of following a higher law against an arbitrary and tyrannical one lies at the heart of Sophocles’ work. Antigone (Nina Cassells), daughter of Oedipus wishes to bury a slain twin brother. Polynices was only claiming his due as alternate ruler, but he brought civil war and he and his twin Eteocles – who had usurped a second year as ruler – have killed each other. Now their uncle Creon (Max Bennett), taking charge, decrees “loyal” Eteocles shall have a state funeral, Polynices be picked by crows. Antigone symbolically pours earth and a libation despite protests from her pacific sister Ismene (Anushka Chakravarti).”I must” declares Antigone, quite clear that her actions will lead to her death.
Brought by a baffled Messenger (Testimony Adegbite) Antigone is as a king’s daughter “proud” and as unyielding as Creon. But should he not bend, whose law is arbitrary? As the protagonists tell us, fourth-walling, there’s a lot more havering by Creon, cut in this 70-minute rendition (without interval), short even by Greek standards: and that with contemporary freightage too. Tiresias (a steadily remorseless Melody Chikakane Brown) warns Creon when it’s already too late. Creon’s son Haemon (Brandon Bassir, playing as if in disbelief at his father) in love with Antigone (as indeed Thebes is) pleads and rails. Creon’s wife Eurydice (an unfurling Lizzy Watts, coiled with grief) emerges as a protagonist in her own right as tragedy engulfs all. Except Ismene, in a way.
Segal has crafted a rapid sinewy style of (often neatly-rhymed) verse, stripped and pointedly sardonic. It’s where the approximation to Sophocles’ text (if you have the play) is deployed in italics, with the commentary around it in normal type. These come over as different registers: immersion and standing back. Happily the distinction softens though the tonal demotic for contemporary speech tells you the actors are commenting on the play, and its quiddity. Later though they’ll be exporting those themes to our contemporary world.
As telling and exposition, there’s fine compressed writing, Segal’s signature in earlier plays. Outside direct speech though, storytelling merely comments chorically on the action; it’s easy to follow without it. Tensions inherent in the original are rarely given time to build or allow us to identify closely with Antigone and Ismene in particular.
Amongst the fine, hard-working cast Cassells as a striking Antigone and Chakravarti’s incensed Ismene are both resolute; for once the antimonies of two very different viewpoints aren’t skewed hopelessly towards Antigone.
Where the play finally lifts, is at the point of maximum screech: in fourth-wall moments that could have been prepared had Segal integrated themes and hints much earlier in an otherwise rather anaemic Sophocles take on Antigone. Segal’s Antigone though hasn’t quite established itself, save as commentary, partly since she skews it late.
Excitement builds as Chikakane Brown – an adamantine Tiresias – proclaims. And Cassells pours an oleaginous black oil in a circle round the blank crome yellow stage. It’s at that point Cousins’ movement steps up: as the actors step out of Sophocles’ roles and adopt quasi-fictive identities as actors. Cassells more obliquely witnesses an appalling atrocity by neglect in Gaza, Bennett talks of a harrowing family event with immense power and affect (the most moving moment of the play), and Chikakane Brown memorably discusses assisted suicide.
As Cassells declares at her most radiantly powerful: “If just one body.. could cause a city to be cursed.. We should be cursed… We are cursed.” It’s the nub of the play though the moral comes late to alter the tenor. There’s terrific potential here, and Segal’s construction seems (ironically) seduced by Sophocles’ storytelling instead of intervening earlier; when after all fourth-walling has already sapped the pristine strength of the original. It needs replacing with Segal’s direct vision earlier, building with touches to her nodal point of how the gods are cursing us now.
A fine premiss, a gifted playwright with a superb, hard-working cast seems slightly adrift; but still addressing themes that frankly most other playwrights don’t dare to touch. For that Segal deserves honour, and is absolutely right to adapt Sophocles. Who one feels wouldn’t have flinched either. Segal’s themes are a necessary graft on Antigone and this should have been worked in earlier, with the climax more consummately wrought in pity and terror. As it is, Segal can distance the action, and diffuse the impact. But there’s still an unsettling and a power here. At 80 minutes, say, with just a few touches this could still startle and burn a lot of politics into the underworld and its wrath. Still a worthwhile exit to Chichester’s season, it ends it in a question-mark.
Casting Director Bryony Jarvis-Taylor CDG CSA, Assistant Director Ellie Hurt, Vocal Coach Richard Ryder.
Production Manager Charlotte Ranson, Company Stage Manager Suzanne Bourke, DSM Caitlin Shay, ASM Evelin Thomas.
