Mercury theatre, Colchester
Wendy Kweh plays Creon as a politically minded queen in Merlynn Tong’s adaptation steeped in grief and decay
The chorus has been banished, the cast of five has no room for Eurydice and, most strikingly, Creon is a queen in Merlynn Tong’s streamlined take on Sophocles. This British premiere, directed by Dawn Walton at the smartly renovated Mercury, has a shrewd design and is well performed even if the emotions and arguments don’t always crackle as they might.
Wendy Kweh plays Creon as more politician than tyrant, repeating her slogan, “One heart, one city, one Thebes”, from a lectern as if at party conference. Kweh convinces as a ruler intent on rebuilding the city; she sees Antigone’s burial of her brother Polynices not as an act of private duty but a display of public terror that threatens social cohesion at a time of crisis. In a superb sequence, the burial is shown to literally take place behind Creon’s back after she has forbidden it.