David Levin isn’t too keen on letting people relax. This is clear from the way he ushers any guests invited into his company away from the leather gentleman’s club armchairs that now grace The Tron Theatre’s Victorian Bar, and towards a more utilitarian hard-backed affair.
“I don’t want you to get too comfortable,” the director of The Tron Theatre’s new production of Antigone says, before fixing you with a beady but still twinkling eye. “Now,” he says. “We can talk about life. We can talk about anything you want.”
In the current climate, Levine’s new version of Antigone, which opens at The Tron this week, is as good a starting point as any. Especially given his background as a director in Israel, a land caught in the almost permanent crossfire of global conflict. Antigone, of course, as written originally by Sophocles and every interpreter since, is a play about the very human cost of war, as its eponymous heroine pays the ultimate sacrifice for paying honour to her slaughtered brother.
“There are plays,” according to Levin, “that any time, any year, day or night, in any country, that are right to do. Antigone is one of them. Lear is another. The Tempest another. I can name you about 10 or 15, but I can’t name you a hundred. The world of the Greeks, in their drama, is that once the king or queen dies, those are political acts, and the effect is immediate on everybody. Today, if the stock market in Japan collapses, then that affects the price of bread, and whatever’s done affects everybody. Most of the Greek plays, and Antigone’s one of them, are about crossing boundaries, and getting beyond the mountains of darkness. I’m from Israel, so for me it’s about a world moving beyond the Ten Commandments. When Creon makes his rules, they may be right for him, but if you do not bury the dead, this is an inhuman act, and everything collapses; individuals like Antigone, the family, and the whole society. A society like today, which sometimes likes to deny or ignore humanity, then we’re doomed. If you do not take care of this planet that we came here to enjoy, then we’re doomed.”
Levin’s version contemporises things in this way, making clear how Antigone herself becomes the conscience of society. Without mentioning it, this reflects how much of the initial opposition to the ongoing wars in Iraq and elsewhere has consistently come from young people not prepared to accept the status quo.
“We live in a very confused society,” Levin observes, “and our vacations to Barbados won’t make it better. You can say that people are more free today than they were. But when we had less freedom, maybe we cared for people more. With all the things people can afford today, are people happier?”
Such sooth-saying questioning may seem obvious, but illustrates Levin’s entire philosophy of theatre. Levin’s road to The Tron has been a colourful one. Arriving in the UK as a young man in the 1950s, he went with a letter of recommendation to George Devine, who’d recently co-founded the English Stage Company at The Royal Court theatre, then on the crest of the angry young man wave following the cause celebre that John Osborne’s play, Look Back In Anger, had become. Throughout the 1960s Levin divided his time writing and publishing volumes of his own poetry and working on experimental theatre in Israel. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked at the Habima National Theatre, becoming its artistic director in 1986. Moving to London, more recently Levin has worked at the Arcola Theatre.
Now resident in Edinburgh where he moved a year ago to live with his Scots wife, Antigone will be a potentially thrilling opportunity for theatre-goers to feed off Levin’s accrued experience of the last half century.
“For me,” he says, “a play is something that doesn’t just stand for itself. Unless it has moral or political applications, I don’t see any sense of doing it. The one thing I hope to come through my version is not just the relationship between Antigone and Creon, but if you read the play closely, this is a play about family. Individuals, family and society. They all relate.”
And will we be seeing further productions by Levin now he’s resident in these parts.
My dear,” he says with a flourish, mischief in his eyes, “That is up to your colleagues.”
Antigone, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until October 27
www.tron.co.uk
The Herald, October 11th 2007
ends
“I don’t want you to get too comfortable,” the director of The Tron Theatre’s new production of Antigone says, before fixing you with a beady but still twinkling eye. “Now,” he says. “We can talk about life. We can talk about anything you want.”
In the current climate, Levine’s new version of Antigone, which opens at The Tron this week, is as good a starting point as any. Especially given his background as a director in Israel, a land caught in the almost permanent crossfire of global conflict. Antigone, of course, as written originally by Sophocles and every interpreter since, is a play about the very human cost of war, as its eponymous heroine pays the ultimate sacrifice for paying honour to her slaughtered brother.
“There are plays,” according to Levin, “that any time, any year, day or night, in any country, that are right to do. Antigone is one of them. Lear is another. The Tempest another. I can name you about 10 or 15, but I can’t name you a hundred. The world of the Greeks, in their drama, is that once the king or queen dies, those are political acts, and the effect is immediate on everybody. Today, if the stock market in Japan collapses, then that affects the price of bread, and whatever’s done affects everybody. Most of the Greek plays, and Antigone’s one of them, are about crossing boundaries, and getting beyond the mountains of darkness. I’m from Israel, so for me it’s about a world moving beyond the Ten Commandments. When Creon makes his rules, they may be right for him, but if you do not bury the dead, this is an inhuman act, and everything collapses; individuals like Antigone, the family, and the whole society. A society like today, which sometimes likes to deny or ignore humanity, then we’re doomed. If you do not take care of this planet that we came here to enjoy, then we’re doomed.”
Levin’s version contemporises things in this way, making clear how Antigone herself becomes the conscience of society. Without mentioning it, this reflects how much of the initial opposition to the ongoing wars in Iraq and elsewhere has consistently come from young people not prepared to accept the status quo.
“We live in a very confused society,” Levin observes, “and our vacations to Barbados won’t make it better. You can say that people are more free today than they were. But when we had less freedom, maybe we cared for people more. With all the things people can afford today, are people happier?”
Such sooth-saying questioning may seem obvious, but illustrates Levin’s entire philosophy of theatre. Levin’s road to The Tron has been a colourful one. Arriving in the UK as a young man in the 1950s, he went with a letter of recommendation to George Devine, who’d recently co-founded the English Stage Company at The Royal Court theatre, then on the crest of the angry young man wave following the cause celebre that John Osborne’s play, Look Back In Anger, had become. Throughout the 1960s Levin divided his time writing and publishing volumes of his own poetry and working on experimental theatre in Israel. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked at the Habima National Theatre, becoming its artistic director in 1986. Moving to London, more recently Levin has worked at the Arcola Theatre.
Now resident in Edinburgh where he moved a year ago to live with his Scots wife, Antigone will be a potentially thrilling opportunity for theatre-goers to feed off Levin’s accrued experience of the last half century.
“For me,” he says, “a play is something that doesn’t just stand for itself. Unless it has moral or political applications, I don’t see any sense of doing it. The one thing I hope to come through my version is not just the relationship between Antigone and Creon, but if you read the play closely, this is a play about family. Individuals, family and society. They all relate.”
And will we be seeing further productions by Levin now he’s resident in these parts.
My dear,” he says with a flourish, mischief in his eyes, “That is up to your colleagues.”
Antigone, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until October 27
www.tron.co.uk
The Herald, October 11th 2007
ends
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