A real Greek triumph

"The furniture that you are sitting on is listed," may not be the first line we expect from this biting Greek drama about conflicting loyalties towards family and state. But, then, Sophocles's work is not often presented in a listed building that was formerly a council chamber and coroner's court.

Creon, the autocratic ruler of a Thebes just emerging from a bitter civil war, sits at the judge's platform to pass sentence on his rebellious niece Antigone. We, the jury on the semi-circular council benches, consider our verdict on his kingship. What impressive, echoing resonance this setting lends to the drama.

And what a refreshingly clear, precise and modern adaptation young writer/director Jacquelyn Honess-Martin offers. Gone is the cumbersome chorus, in favour of intriguingly fleshed-out female roles for Antigone's sister Ismene and Creon's wife Eurydice.

Zoe Robinson's turn as the former, usually portrayed as a spineless drip, is so compelling and balanced that it provides, for the first time I have seen, a plausible source of counter-argument to the normally steam-rollering Antigone.

Francis Kennedy's besuited, businesslike Creon presides over the very model of a modern royal family, where the young women sit on charity boards and some members don't always act for what is perceived to be the good of the whole.

Nick Richards's Haemon behaves as if he has just returned from a dogooding gap year and Bridget Collins's unwavering student rebel of an Antigone surely has a stash of Che Guevara posters somewhere in the palace. A triumph on every level.