An ‘Antigone’ With Big Character Flaws

Jean Anouilh’s reinterpretation of Sophocles’ “Antigone” is given a languidly stylish presentation at the Globe Playhouse, but Nigel Cox as the title character cannot adequately carry the show. Her gawkishness and tremulous voice contradict her 1940s glamour-girl looks, and she is too easily overshadowed by almost everybody.

Anouilh passed this last chapter in the Oedipus cycle through a political filter. The excited passion of the Greek original is tempered by the cool, upper-class nonchalance of Anouilh’s Nazi-occupied France, making this telling more sinister and politically focused. Director John Jahnke gives tremendous atmosphere to this fascist fable. Yet all falters and fails when Cox as Antigone begins with a edgy whine of anxiety that grows neither into courageous moral purity nor bold defiance.

Cox never musters a powerful presence that would frighten her uncle Creon (Tom Fitzpatrick), who must condemn her to death for burying her brother against his orders. Fitzpatrick presents a man well-studied in political cowardice, astute to the matters of state but not matters of loyalty and love. Yet without an Antigone that can counter his moral decay with her fierce nobility, Fitzpatrick’s bureaucratically savage Creon is without a worthy foe.

In the end, one is more intrigued by the villain than the heroine. That is the real tragedy.

* “Antigone,” Globe Playhouse, 1107 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends March 16. $12. (213) 665-3537. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.