ANCIENT MYTH,
MODERN BODY POLITIC

A classical tragedy is boldly reframed
through a contemporary moral crisis,
giving Antigone’s defiance startling new urgency

Celia Keenan-Bolger, Haley Wong, and Susannah Perkins

Within The Public Theater, opening the newly renamed Barbaralee Theater (formerly the Anspacher), is Anna Ziegler’s powerful new play Antigone (This Play I Read in High School). Far from a straightforward adaptation of the ancient Greek tragedy, the play about the daughter of Oedipus explodes with timely relevance that would likely astonish even Sophocles.

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Susannah Perkins

Not the first contemporary retelling of Antigone, Jean Anouilh famously set his 1944 version in Nazi-occupied France, where themes of resistance, moral absolutism, and the conflict between individual conscience and state law took center stage. Though the themes may feel familiar, Anouilh’s play reads today as formal and cool compared with the raw immediacy in which Ziegler’s work triumphs.

Susannah Perkins and Ethan Dubin

Ziegler’s most notable innovation is the effortless blending of two time periods. The Chorus, played by Celia Keenan-Bolger, is no longer an outsider commenting on the action but the very reason the story is being revisited. She recalls reading Antigone in high school and then putting it away. Yet over the years, the echo of Antigone’s voice keeps returning to her—more urgently now that this contemporary forty-year-old woman is pregnant and living in a world where her freedom to choose how to respond is anything but certain.

Tony Shalhoub and Katie Kreisler

On a plane, she notices across the aisle a teenage girl (Susannah Perkins) reading the play. Suddenly, she can’t help but view her as Antigone through her own present-day lens: a young woman with an unwanted pregnancy. From there she becomes both narrator and stage manager, setting furniture and props while walking in and out of a story that appears both ancient and contemporary. The entrance to the king’s castle has a metal detector, streaming television proves oddly complicated, and most strikingly, just outside the castle walls is a Proprietor (Katie Kreisler) who performs abortions despite King Creon’s newly imposed laws regulating women’s autonomy.

Susannah Perkins and Calvin Leon Smith

In Ziegler’s play, Antigone’s rebellion is no longer about burying her brother’s body in defiance of the king’s edict to let it rot in public. Instead, the battle centers on her own body and how she will handle her pregnancy. Over the play’s two hours and fifteen minutes, Antigone breaks the rigid law to act according to her own conscience. In Act II, King Creon—played with delicious, troubled authority by Tony Shalhoub—demands a public apology. Instead, she pushes him to change the law itself. The moral impasse and its aftermath lead to a tragic conclusion more devastating than either Sophocles or Anouilh imagined.

Dave Quay, Haley Wong, Susannah Perkins, and Tony Shalhoub

Director Tyne Rafaeli stages the piece as a theatrical event that feels bracingly fresh. Constant movement, startling imagery, and moments of brave, uncomfortable truth land with force. Casting by Kate Murray and Jordan Thaler is impeccable.

Tony Shalhoub

Susannah Perkins’s Antigone is a revelation: a late-teen ball of fire, self-assured and articulate, burning with an authenticity that refutes laws against humanity. In many ways she embodies everything Keenan-Bolger’s Chorus was not in high school and is still struggling to become. Shalhoub’s Creon is a man clearly unsuited for the throne, anxiously performing kingship while allowing worries about legacy to drive increasingly rigid decisions. Calvin Leon Smith brings grace and quiet nobility to Haemon, the prince caught between loyalty and love, while Haley Wong’s Ismene strikes a compelling balance between caretaker and cautious mediator.

Susannah Perkins

The remaining cast—Ethan Dubin, Katie Kreisler, and Dave Quay—rotate through double roles, together playing three police officers. Kreisler stands out particularly as the Proprietor who runs the illicit abortion clinic. Her dry wit and tough-as-nails pragmatism yield moments of pure acting gold. As the cops, however, the trio was pushed toward Keystone-style comic relief reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan. Though executed with bravura comic skill, the humor feels forced and oddly misplaced; in a world this fraught, laughter was the last response I wanted.

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Susannah Perkins

Designer David Zinn cleverly uses the theater’s existing columns, back wall, and doors, while lighting designer Jen Schriever helps flip the stage between ancient and contemporary realms with striking fluidity. Enver Chakartash outfits the company largely in contemporary clothing that subtly bridges the two worlds. And the copious stage blood—presumably from Special Effects designer Lillis Meeh—turns the costumes into an unsettling landscape that must present quite the challenge on two-show days.

Celia Keenan-Bolger

Like many theater lovers, I first encountered Oedipus the King and Antigone in high school. Those ancient tragedies have lingered in my imagination ever since, their questions about power, law, fate, and conscience echoing across centuries. Ziegler’s play proves that those questions are far from settled. By reframing a classical myth through the lens of contemporary moral crisis, she reminds us that the voice of Antigone—unyielding, uncompromising, and fiercely human—still refuses to be entombed. And in this electrifying production at The Public Theater, it rings louder than ever.

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photos by Joan Marcus

Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)
The Public Theater, Barbaralee Theater, 425 Lafayette Street
2 hours, 15 minutes; one intermission
Tues-Sun at 7:30, Sat & Sun at 1:30; Wed at 7 (March 25)
ends on March 22, 2026 EXTENDED to April 5, 2026
for tickets, call 212.967.7555 or visit The Public

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Gregory Fletcher is an author, theater professor, playwright, director, and stage manager. His publishing credits include a craft book on playwriting entitled Shorts and Briefs, as well as a collection entitled A Playwright’s Dozen: 13 short plays. Other publishing includes two YA novels (Other People’s Crazy, and Other People’s Drama), 2 novellas in the series Inclusive Bedtime Stories, 2 short stories in The Night Bazaar series, and five essays. Website, Facebook, Instagram.