Review: Antigone Sydney Dramaturgical Co 2025 Sydney Fringe Festival

Those who enjoy both Ancient Greek tragedy and stabbing (the two are far from mutually exclusive) will be delighted with the audacious stab at Antigone by Sydney Dramaturgical Co. It’s shedding blood this week as part of Sydney Fringe Festival.

Sophocles, the Dan Brown of political metaphysics, remains as intellectually bedazzling and emotionally wringing as he probably was when the Athenian warrior-poet returned from helping lay waste to Thebes to quickly pen this little perplexer, back in the day, circa 431 BC. Almost 2,500 years later, this singular production is still replete with revelation.

As Producer / Director Aubrey Wang told The Scoop, this is indeed theatre that asks you to lean in, puzzle through, and feel your way forward.

Unwrapping any of Sophocles’ concurrent cryptic arguments around existence, family, society, power and morality requires a code even DaVinci might’ve struggled with. But inside the Actors’ Pulse in Redfern, all the wonderful clues have been arranged in a startling and immensely satisfying manner.

This is an Antigone that rattles and hums with a multitude of ingenuity. The tone is raw and brutal. The performances are huge.

As Antigone and Haimon, Naomi Belet and Adam Lee strike particularly dolorous notes as the totally doomed lovers. Warren Paul Glover is a wonderful bastard as Cleon. He’s very much a king to whom Daniel Saunders’ stiff and sycophantic Aristos is no bloody use at all.

Andrew Cremen and Mim Aitken provide outstanding bench impact. Amber Allayiotis is a mesmeric Eurydice, doleful behind her extraordinary Greek lyre.

A tight, stark setting allows the true centre of this play’s naturalistic power to emerge through its (surely) unique combination of language – movement and gesture, Australian English, AUSLAN and Ancient Greek. The upshot is an Antigone devastated by the weight of faith, religion and ritual.

Elevated by its rich use of AUSLAN, this version also retains key Greek terms (nomos, atē, phronēma), and it just works. To my ear, the combination of these languages adds a powerful (more Polynesian than Peloponnesian) ceremonial splendour and gravity.

I was fortunate enough to catch the pre-show lecture, Sophoclean Stagecraft and Invention, delivered with an endearing po-faced reverence by the Texan scholar, Dr James H. Collins. The dashing Sydney Uni Senior Lecturer in Greek Language and Literature is certainly among the AUKUS Alliance’s greatest living classical dramaturgical philologists*.

Dr Collins noted that these plays were first presented inside the Temple of Dionysus, a reflection of the critical centrality of religious life in Ancient Greece.

And something this production nails. Whatever dumb decisions they choose to make, the discombobulating ephemerality of these fickle Gods is taking its toll on everyone in Thebes.

Our titular heroine is the prickly daughter and, er… sister of the ex-King Oedipus – who plucked his own eyes yet made a comeback many centuries later via Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis Oedipus.

He’s the chap who outwitted the Sphinx to become King of Thebes. Unfortunately, it’s a Greek Tragedy. So while things seem dandy for a bit, Oedipus actually killed his own long lost father and married his mother, the Queen.

But that’s old hat because Antigone is busy defying the new king of Thebes, her uncle Creon, who’s refusing to bury her brother for being a bit of a traitor.

Herein lies the action. Antigone is a melding of loyalty vs faith, law vs morality, gods vs humans and families vs families. Spoiler: Antigone and all the nice people get punished and die.

Antigone is presented by Sydney Dramaturgical Co. It runs until 20 September as part of the 2025 Sydney Fringe Festival. The Actors Pulse Playhouse, 103 Regent Street Redfern NSW 2016.

Tickets: https://sydneyfringe.com/events/antigone/

Website: https://www.sydneydramaturgical.com/antigone

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/sydneydramaturgical/

Each weeknight show will be preceded by a complimentary lecture on Antigone. The talks will run from 6:00 – 6:30pm, with evening shows starting promptly at 7pm. Attendance at one event does not require a ticket to the other.

Photo credits: Jack Okeby and Bronte Godden

*I know this because his daughter is my daughter’s best mate. While the Collinses en masse are smashing the Edwardses on a daily basis across scholarship, sport, culture, finance and outward mobility, I’m pleased to report they can’t compete when it comes to dropping small-minded jibes in a public domain.