Thank God for Tiresias, the old, mad, blind prophet Tiresias. His words, in my feverish, impatient imagination, sent a shiver of hopeful resuscitation through my near lifeless body: “Your time in charge of this sorry State (play) is almost over, Creon, and soon life, interest, imagination will rule again in this city (Playroom).” How I wanted him to say that. But no, Ben Blyth’s lively interjection, as the prophet who forsees Creon’s prideful mistake, wasn’t enough to salvage this disappointing production.

The whole thing felt subdued, as if the  cast had read the script and then taken the sorry message about pragmatism and political responsibility to heart. The staging consisted merely of a series of white boxes of varying sizes which, apart from being identical to those used in a production of Anouilh’s Antigone last Summer, seemed to serve no function beyond creating a miniature obstacle course for the actors. Scene changes involved a member of the cast choosing a box at random and moving it into a slightly different position. As little attention seems to have been directed towards the costumes which, apart from Creon’s sharp suit, seemed equally random. This being said, Haimon’s drainpipe trousers were a thing of wonder. How on earth did he manage to fit into them?

Not all of it made me want to clog up my ears with cream cheese. Katie Alcock’s Antigone grew in confidence during the play, and her final scene was played delicately and sincerely. Matt Kilroy also excelled when showing his character’s weaker side, although it wasn’t clear that his wife’s death was any more than a footnote to the loss of his son.

But the production simply failed to engage the audience, despite (or rather because of) the fact that the actors often seemed to be addressing us directly, rather than playing for us. Scenes which should have been intimate were delivered via tannoy, and the actors were more worried about showing themselves to the audience than they were about interacting with each other. And at times the Chorus, the one character who might have got away with this habit, sounded more like a radio newsreader on a late night shift than an interested onlooker. The characters failed to convey the paradoxical feelings of urgency and helplessness that make tragedy compelling. In other words, you didn’t get a sense that any of it mattered very much. By Pascal Porcheron