Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Four stars
You never met bored teenagers quite like Antigone and Ismene, the two self-mythologising sisters at the centre of Lulu Raczka’s audacious twenty-first century reboot of Sophocles’ Ancient Greek classic. First seen in 2020, Raczka’s reimagining of the original is revived here by director Finn den Hertog in an appropriately bold production that sees Eilidh Loan and Holly Howden Gilchrist bring the two girls to life in devastating and dervish-like fashion.
Stuck in their living room and caught in the crossfire of the epic family fallout turned civil war the play is hinged upon, Loan’s Antigone and Howden Gilchrst’s Ismene play at being wannabe grown ups in a sleepover like scenario. Sex, booze, older men and all the other things they can only pretend about are all on the agenda before they end up doing karaoke instead of actually indulging in such japes.
It is Antigone’s attitude problem that does for them, as she makes out she’s more experienced than she is, or else stands up to the locals in the actual bar they make it to, where they are dissed as a pair of princesses. Ismene is the sensible kid sister, who initially hangs on Antigone's every word before the real trouble starts. That comes when their dead brothers are carried home in body bags, victims of the war they started.
When only one can be buried, Antigone sets out on a mission to do what she sees as the right thing, no matter who the bad guys might be. She doesn’t so much martyr herself as show herself up as an impulsive and impassioned drama queen who takes youthful rebellion too far until her grand gesture finally causes her downfall.
Sisterhood is everything in this collaboration between the Tron and Den Hertog and co’s Groupwork company. The production’s multi-media fusion of Milla Clarke’s plush interior design and the choral laments of Lewis den Hertog’s sound give the impression of a larger than life playpen where they run riot in private. Here, the two siblings throw some shapes by way of Vicki Manderson’s movement direction inbetween rapid-fire bursts of machine gun dialogue. It is these sustained verbal volleys that anchor things, with Loan and Howden Gilchrist both giving remarkable performances.
As the consequences of Antigone’s actions are laid bare, she may get poster girl immortality, but as Ismene’s final speech makes plain, it is she who has to live with what happened. As her life grows ever more ordinary, however, both she and the past gradually fade away into half remembered history in a vital new take on classic fare.
The Herald, September 24th 2026
ends
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