The Burial at Thebes NYC Reviews and Tickets

"A few things feel off in 'The Burial at Thebes.' But one big thing — the script — is on, and that saves this version of 'Antigone' from failure...The production occasionally works against the script. The set and the costumes look woefully cheap and distracting...No overriding guidance seems to steer the actors, who work in disparate and wavering accents that, taken together, prove irksome."
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"The characters seem either ill-assured or locked into generic choices; Tony Walton's set design is the wrong size; and stage pictures too often involve a group standing in a half circle while someone else declaims. The Irish Rep's temporary relocation to the postage stamp–sized DR2 may explain some of the production's awkwardness...Twice, though, the show grabs Heaney's text by the throat."
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"In lieu of offering a deeper understanding, Heaney has taken Sophocles' drama and saps it of all nuance...Charlotte Moore directs the piece with a startling lethargy. Her blocking on the cozy DR2 stage suggests claustrophobia...Haemon casually moseys onstage, looking nothing like a man whose fiancée is about to die of forced starvation. Other characters stand to the side and stare out at the audience, like lesser runway models making way for Naomi Campbell."
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"If only the director had found actors capable of delivering the verse! Instead, she has assembled a company that is in over its collective head...'The Burial at Thebes' demands a set of skills that is entirely absent here."
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"Seamus Heaney delivered a dead-eyed spin on 'Antigone' that stripped away the drama inherent in Sophocles's tale…Now, by way of a threadbare mounting and casting that, in all but one case, is insulated from any hope of electricity, director Charlotte Moore has ensured that now that poetry doesn't land, either. What remains is a colossal conundrum, an evening that runs only 65 minutes but nonetheless feels painfully overlong and underseasoned."
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"Robert Langdon Lloyd’s eloquent performance as the blind prophet Tiresias energizes what had been a stilted presentation...The cast doesn’t fully cohere as an ensemble…Though patchy, this production of 'The Burial at Thebes' in 75 minutes fitfully succeeds at depicting this classic tale with some very compelling sequences."
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"As unostentatiously staged by Charlotte Moore with a solid company, the play reminds us why we keep returning to the Greek well for critical contemplations of universal issues. When New York digs itself out of its own current burial, theatergoers will find that visiting this modern version of an ancient text will be worth the effort. It stirs up many thoughts, not least of which are those regarding the unsettling rhetoric about leadership being mouthed during this year’s presidential campaign."
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"I wish that in the process he, and the Irish Repertory Theatre, brought more to the table than just a well-rendered translation...Some of the elemental power of raw emotion remains, and of course Heaney was a superb poet...But we are simply politely intrigued, and I view that as a missed opportunity for both a play and production which could, and should, have gone for more."
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"The cast in the performance I saw was off. Ms. Brockman had laryngitis; so she was just trying to get the words out, forget about acting the role. Mr. O’Brien is lackluster and seems beaten before the tragedies of his own making leave their mark, so the plot just drags...Directed by Charlotte Moore, with a barely there set design by Tony Walton, this isn’t the company’s best work."
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"In telling of the conflict between the two, and its lamentous result, Heaney is clear, direct and graceful...Dramatically, though, this production isn't likely to have you on the edge of your seat...The cast, performing in a variety of accents, performs on a sliding scale from good to mediocre. The overall production, which is simply staged and runs about 75 minutes, is a good introduction to 'Antigone,' without suggesting why the play is still performed 2,457 years after its debut."
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"Heaney injects touches of colloquialism and humor into a sustained declamatory style that takes a few minutes to get used to amid our contemporary naturalistic expectations. But once attuned to the poet’s leathery cadences, we sink into the story...I’m once again impressed by a fine Irish Rep production that’s different from every other one I’ve seen."
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"Sophocles’ 'Antigone' is among the greatest plays ever written, Seamus Heaney is a Nobel Prize winning poet, and Irish Repertory Theatre produces wonderful shows with outstanding actors. How then did 'The Burial At Thebes' turn out to be a poor derivative of 'Antigone,' with amateurish acting?...The overall sense of the acting is amateurish. Actors whom I’ve seen do outstanding work in other plays are insufficient here, and the accents are all over the place."
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