Evelina Fernández’s “Antigone: In the Language of Kings” receives a theatrically entrancing staging at the Getty Villa’s Outdoor Theater in a production co-produced with Latino Theater Company.
The adaptation resets Sophocles’ tragedy to Aztec culture in a transposition that is both visually and musically enlivening. If the drama is oversimplified, it nonetheless makes for a gripping spectacle.
It’s not easy to find analogies that can reanimate the importance of burial rites to a modern audience. The production’s creative team, led by the inexhaustibly inventive director José Luis Valenzuela, returns us to a world where the dead are owed sacred duties and the living are fearful to renege on this basic human responsibility.
The incense-filled production — conducted in English, Spanish and Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs), with English and Spanish supertitles — proceeds like a pageant. Headdress-clad warriors clash on the battlefield. A masked chorus, moving with the coordination of a Broadway musical ensemble, gives voice to the anxiety and grief of the collective. A statuesque figure of death, trailing black fabric, sweeps up the casualties of war with the efficiency of a human vacuum.
In Sophocles, Antigone, Oedipus’ headstrong daughter, defies the edict issued by her uncle Creon, the newly deputized king, declaring that her slain brother Polynices is an enemy of the state and therefore ineligible for burial. For Antigone this is an imposition of political power over divine law, and she puts her life on the line to uphold her obligation to her family and faith.
The German philosopher Hegel considered Sophocles’ “Antigone” the high-water mark of tragedy for the way it dramatizes the collision between two equally justified moral positions. Creon, representing the claims of the polis over the clan, cannot be dismissed outright. Nor can Antigone, whose all-consuming identification with her cause renders her indifferent to other obligations, be adopted as a user-friendly hero.
Tragedy arises from the one-sidedness of their claims. Antigone loses her life and Creon, for all intents and purposes, destroys his own, suffering the deaths of his most cherished loved ones.
Hegel’s reading of “Antigone” illustrates his thesis-antithesis-synthesis view of dialectical progress. Sophocles, it can be surmised from the other plays in his Oedipus cycle, likely conceived “Antigone” with a larger metaphysical design. But even if Hegel’s interpretation would have seemed off the mark to him, Antigone and Creon are too complex to reduce to a schematic argument.
Fernández simplifies these antagonists. Her Antíkona (a formidable Esperanza América) reveals her softer side even when rejecting her sister, Ixmene (Alexis B. Santiago), for not having the courage to zealously join her fight.
Tlahtoani Klion (Cástulo Guerra), Emperor of Tenochtitlan, is a ruler so intoxicated with his own authority that he’s clearly courting rebuke from the gods. It’s only a matter of time before his hubris is slapped down.
The acting is theatrically robust, though not always subtle. I wondered if ambiguity had been outlawed along with the funeral rites of Antíkona’s warrior brother Polynices. The bold clarity of the performances was energizing, but the wailing sometimes sounded like parody grief.
The outsize nature of the production invites overacting. And Ric Salinas, who plays Chachalacani, humorously obliges, bringing his Culture Clash vaudeville skills to the role of the sentry who’s caught between the rock of Klion’s tyranny and his fellow feeling for Antíkona’s sympathetic cause.
Strong performances are elicited from José Eduardo Moreno, who plays Klion’s son Hemon, Antíkona’s fiancé, and Zilah Mendoza, who plays Cihuatlahtoani Euridice, Klion’s wife. Their portrayals, mixing ferocious strength with stark vulnerability, make the tragedy’s pileup of bodies at the end all the more piercing.
América’s Antíkona is as unyielding as any Antigone I’ve seen. It’s a commanding portrayal, but I wish the production didn’t shrink from its protagonist’s fierceness. The obdurate side of the character is lessened with a gesture Antíkona bestows on Ixmene — a reassurance that even though she’s a revolutionary, she’s still an affectionate sister.
Sophocles is made of harsher stuff. Fernández’s adaptation is anxious to turn tragedy into a sermon, offering theatergoers moral solace where Sophocles leaves his audience in a contemplative state of stunned silence.
But the staging makes up for the dramatic shortfall. Valenzuela masterly orchestrates the mise-en-scène. The majestic costumes of Catarina Copelli, invoking a rich brocaded world on the brink of disappearance, might be the real superstar.
François-Pierre Couture’s scenic design is mesmerizing without ever being overbearing. “Lee” Xinyuan Li’s lighting heightens the sense of theatrical foreboding. Yee Eun Nam’s projections inject into this transient world a welcome subtlety.
Urbanie Lucero’s choreography and movement direction maintain the production’s graceful poise. The musicians, discreetly performing at the back of the stage under the guidance of Mesoamerican instruments director Christopher García, charge the air with percussive Indigenous wonder.
“Antigone: In the Language of Kings” marks the Getty Villa’s 20th anniversary of reinventing classical tragedy for our time. This gorgeous staging makes me ardently wish that the theater extends the tradition for at least another 20 years.
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