Power of Conscience

For whose sake does she break the law? "For nobody. For myself." Even though she knows Creon will remove the dirt, she also knows that "what a person can do, a person ought to do." It is said that mankind's strongest drives are sex, hunger, and self-preservation. But there are some people for whom conscience is just as strong, or stronger--at times terrifyingly strong. Antigone is one such; she prefers to die rather than to try to live with a guilty conscience and with compromise.

Towards the end of the play, when Antigone is in a prison cell and attempts to dictate a letter for Haemon, we are deeply moved by her momentary human lapse, "I don't even know what I'm dying for." Here Miss Tucci loses her poise and runs about the enclosure like a caged bird in panic. But when she finally exits to her death, she knows...yes, she knows. And so do we.

The Creon of Sophocles is a pigheaded, authoritarian tyrant who is absolutely confident of his own infallibility. The Creon of Anouilh-Carnovsky is quite different. We even learn that in his youth "he loved music, bought rare manuscripts, was a kind of art patron." But now he has become the sort of person against whom Archibald MacLeish has just warned us: "Man in the electronic age is not a votary of the arts--he has more serious business. He sees himself, whatever his economic system, as a social and scientific animal, the great unraveler of the universe, its potential master, and his tool is not the sculptor's chisel any longer or the brush that paints an image of himself--his tool is technological information.... Man cannot exist as man without an image of himself to question all he knows."

Anouilh's Creon is intelligent, dignified, and efficient. He didn't seek power, but "once I take on the job, I must do it properly." He is not without some compassion; he even offers to gloss over Antigone's first violation of his edict if she will agree not to repeat it. To him the burial of Polyneices is "meaningless," the people he governs are "featherheaded rabble," and "this whole business is nothing but politics." Carnovsky is marvelously forceful in describing his job ("Kings, my girl, have other things to do than to surrender themselves to their private feelings."), and in his extended Homeric simile about the ship of state, culminating with the terrible pronunciamento, "Nothing has a name--except the ship, and the storm."

A Living Death

Up to now Carnovsky has been dressed in a blue blazer and grey flannels. When he realizes he is not winning and that more drastic tactics are needed, he doffs his blazer and carries on the fight in sweater and shirtsleeves. In the end he loses not only Antigone, but also his son Haemon and his wife Eurydice. Now he is alone, and has only the living death of a cabinet meeting to look forward to. It is a touching moment when he tells his little page, winningly played by Billy Partello, "Never grow up if you can help it."

Anthony Mainionis' Haemon is adequate but somewhat colorless. Marian Hailey manages sufficiently to convey the weak-willed and vacillating Ismene--"infirm of purpose," to use Lady Macbeth's taunt. Antigones are rare, but Ismenes are a dime a dozen. Jane Farnol brings a good deal of warmth to the role of Antigone's devoted and solicitous old nurse. Richard Castellano, Edward Rutney, and Garry Mitchell, dressed in blue uniforms with red stripes, are fine as the three guards, who represent the majority of society; they are part of Creon's "featherheaded rabble." They are hard-drinking, vulgar-tongued, card-playing dullards...non-entities, really. They are utterly indifferent to what is going on around them, and couldn't begin to understand it even if they cared. They serve to underline Anouilh's prevailing pessimism about mankind. Kilty has also thrown in a couple of mute secret service men in grey suits and sunglasses, who go about their business with ominous dispatch.

Donald Oenslager has provided an aptly symbolic setting. Thebes has just been torn by civil war, and the stage is punctuated by four enormous red columns, all but one of which are badly cracked and chipped. Surrounding them, therefore, is a network of metal scaffolding, parts of which later fold in to Antigone's prison cell. This and Tharon Musser's fluid lighting allow the show to proceed for two hours straight through, as Anouilh intended, without intermission.

But it is to the issues raised by Antigone and Creon that one's mind keeps returning. Important among them is civil disobedience. When and to what extent is it justified? Will not the putting of conscience above law lead to anarchy?

Those who would condemn civil disobedience must face up to the fact that persons who have committed it in the past have not all been eccentric nuts, but have often been clearly vandicated by time. Socrates is one example; he chose to die in behalf of free speech. Gandhi is another; it was his sojourn in South Africa in the 1890's that led him to civil disobedience and arrest, and to the formulation of his theories of non-violent action (ahimsa and satyagraha). He took the view that every citizen is responsible for every act of his government. A new book on General Billy Mitchell has revived the story of his courtmartial, conviction and suspension from service. Mitchell has been proven right, but the only officer at the trial to vote for his acquittal was Douglas MacArthur, who some years later would have his own Harry S. Creon to contend with. The Nuremberg War Crimes trial raised the issue again. And in the past few weeks the headlines have been full of the trial and conviction of Muhammad Ali and Captain Howard B. Levy--both of whom refused to compromise with conscience.

The worriers can rest assured that anarchy is not about to sweep over the country. Even those who are civilly disobedient are not protesting all laws, but just one that they believe unjust. The Antigones of the world are always a tiny minority anyway. Not only must they have conscience developed to an unusual degree, but courage as well. Few people can meet the necessary specifications. The world has always needed the few, though, even when they turn out to be wrong. Law and all social institutions need to be questioned and challenged. The great philosopher Martin Buber was fond of pointing out that the Jews of the Old Testament constantly insisted on talking back to God, and that the back-talk was not exclusively verbal either. In the words of Scott Buchanan, "Laws are not dogmas; they are questions to be pursued." It will be a black day indeed when we have no Antigones among us. They have a special glory and a special immortality of their own.

Anouilh's Antigone is one of the most profound discussions of this crucial matter ever penned. I urge you to avail yourself of this transcendent play in its current transcendent production