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I really love Anouilh's Antigone, but the other plays I read in this collection (Eurydice and Romeo and Jeanette) didn't do much for me.
Anouilh's Antigone is one of the most influential modern reworkings of Sophocles' play, and what I find interesting is that it more or less reverses the roles of Antigone and Creon vis-a-vis irrationality. In this version, Antigone has no real illusion that she is justified in burying her brother, but essentially admits that it is compulsive, while Creon has a very pragmatic and rational justification for ruling, and for ruling the way he does. In keeping with the tradition of Oedipus at Colonus, Creon asserts that both Polyneices and Eteocles were gangsters who would kill their father and/or one another (and made attempts to do just that) to get power, and that after their mutual slaughter Creon just picked one of the bodies and declared it Eteocles the hero, while the other body became Polyneices the villain. I'm not totally sure what to make of Creon in this play, particularly knowing that it debuted in Nazi-occupied France. I see Creon as essentially correct (which reflects retroactively into my reading of Sophocles' version), but I'm not sure if he is supposed to represent a collaborator/Vichy government and were supposed to agree with Antigone or what.
Anouilh's Antigone is one of the most influential modern reworkings of Sophocles' play, and what I find interesting is that it more or less reverses the roles of Antigone and Creon vis-a-vis irrationality. In this version, Antigone has no real illusion that she is justified in burying her brother, but essentially admits that it is compulsive, while Creon has a very pragmatic and rational justification for ruling, and for ruling the way he does. In keeping with the tradition of Oedipus at Colonus, Creon asserts that both Polyneices and Eteocles were gangsters who would kill their father and/or one another (and made attempts to do just that) to get power, and that after their mutual slaughter Creon just picked one of the bodies and declared it Eteocles the hero, while the other body became Polyneices the villain. I'm not totally sure what to make of Creon in this play, particularly knowing that it debuted in Nazi-occupied France. I see Creon as essentially correct (which reflects retroactively into my reading of Sophocles' version), but I'm not sure if he is supposed to represent a collaborator/Vichy government and were supposed to agree with Antigone or what.
