Feature Review: Burial at Thebes is at the Shakespeare’s Globe, SE1, October 11, 7.30pm, and October 12, 1pm. Box office: 020 7401 9919

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Published: 9 October 2008

Burial at Thebes is at the Shakespeare’s Globe

Greek Caribbean

IT’S a literary marriage of truly epic proportions. Two Nobel Prize-winning poets, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, apply their considerable talents to a dramatic modern retelling of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy, Antigone, at Shakespeare’s Globe.
The result, Burial at Thebes, is bound raise a few classical eyebrows. Despite being pure, unbridled grief from beginning to end, this production is a musical, scored by the excellent Trinidadian composer Dominique Le Gendre. The entire piece is also narrated in a lilting Rapso song style. Walcott himself will direct the company: a 30-strong orchestra, soloists and a chorus.
The age-old themes of politics and power get a new suit of clothes, but the story still centres around the victorious leader Creon, forced to choose between public responsibility and personal concerns and undone, ultimately, by his insurmountable hubris.
Tickets are rarer than a smile during Oedipus Rex but the show will be touring nationwide. Pray to the inclement Gods for a seat.

SIMON WROE

• Burial at Thebes is at the Shakespeare’s Globe, SE1, October 11, 7.30pm, and October 12, 1pm. Box office: 020 7401 9919

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