Alum makes final Greek exam a celebration, thanks to Antigone

Theatre has everything to do with language. And nothing, of course, but thanks to Aluin's version of Antigone, I want to make a case for the 'everything'. Because language is far more defining for image than the other way around. Confusing? Yep. Thankfully so. 

Aluin's Antigone, or rather, Erik Snel's adaptation of Gerard Koolschijn's translation of the play written by the Greek Sophocles a few hundred years before the beginning of our era, has become a crystal-clear performance. You needn't expect anything else from Alum, by the way. Their adaptations of classical theatre texts are already in eager demand at Gymnasia and VWOs. This is how they survive, even now that the Performing Arts Fund subsidy has passed them by. 

After seeing Antigone, I can only regret that there was no Alum when, as a young adult, I struggled through the final exam translation of Oedipus.

Quiet in the house

Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus who rebels against her uncle Kreon's law. After a deadly dispute between her brothers, he demands that the worse of the two should rot in the sun. Antigone prefers to follow the divine law. The latter stipulates that every human being, especially her brother, must be helped into the afterlife with proper rituals. Kreon belatedly regrets that he punishes every violation of his law with death, and at the end it is suddenly very quiet in the house. 

All this in just under an hour of theatre, performed by two actresses who in no way conform to the ancient Greek image. Rochelle Deekman and Victorine Plante are quite different, not only in age, but also in colour. In a Dutch theatre climate where it is still complicated to cast 'colour-blind', this is a shining example of how to do it.

The moment they face each other in the countless role reversals the adaptation demands, as beloved Haemon and Antigone, or as sisters Antigone and Ismene, or as blind seer Teiresias and king Kreon, no one cares about the visible differences. Purely because language is the vehicle for history, and language naturally determines what we see. And that is what we believe. That's how language works. 

Magic

Then, of course, that language has to be right, and with Gerard Koolschijn that is guaranteed. Then the performance has to come from the heart of the actresses, and that's where it becomes magical. Watching these two women interact is a delight. They play their many-sided duet eagerly and with a fun that is hugely infectious. And then it naturally becomes topical. 

Alum ensures that you are not watching a piece of historical, long-dead theatre about problems of the past. Thanks to Rochelle Deekman and Victorine Plante, you watch a conflict to which you feel every second that bitterly little has changed in those 2,500 years, since its world premiere under the Greek sun. That is one consolation. Gymnasium students, for whom the translation of Antigone is final exam material this year, are lucky if their school gives them this play as a gift.