Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes

  • 13-04-2004 2:15pm
    #1
    parker larkin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 343 ✭✭


    I saw this last week, did any one else go to see it?


    Based on Sophocles' Antigone, this new Seamus Heaney translation is directed by Lorraine Pintal and stars Ruth Negga, Kelly Campbell, Lorcan Cranitch, Owen McDonnell and Stephen Brennan. Again Heaney proves himself to be a master translator of Sophocles, as if he is on speaking terms with the great Greek innovator and has the playwright's approval. The language, as you'd expect, is rich, vibrant, lyrical and captivating. Perfectly contained within it's own subject matter; Antigone's contempt of King Creon's insolent command to directly defy divine law, it beams it's universal and politically loaded meaning out to the audience like a lighthouse on a dark night. By Heaney's own admission, The Burial at Thebes was partly influenced by Bush's war on Iraq, and when you walk away from this performance you can feel its resonance. For the most part, the performances are delivered with force and conviction. The stage and period setting (possibly somewhere in the foreboding '40s) though impressive in themselves, are somewhat unsettling and don't lend themselves well to the pacing or overall nature of the script. And while the blinded Beckettian-like Tiresias, led by a boy on a rope, is extremely effective, the Lady McBeth type exit of Creon's doomed wife seems somewhat indulgent. All in all however, this is a poetically potent play, interesting, engaging and definitely worth an outing.


Advertisement