Antigone stripped down

The appearance of Juliette Binoche brought me to BAM to see her in Antigone, a Sophocles masterpiece, which I discovered only after making a reservation that Ivo van Hove directed it in Anne Carson’s new translation.  This information deflated my enthusiasm.  But, surprisingly, van Hove showed restraint quite contrary to his customary self-indulgent histrionics; the stage was bare and the actors moved sparingly; and Anne Carson’s translation, heavily edited down, followed the original closely so far as the lines she retained were concerned.  Spoken words took precedence, and that was fine; but more poetic lines were gone and so the high emotions of the drama.  The production, with its nearly exclusive focus on the theme of law and justice, was drained of flesh and bone, like the limp raincoat that represented Haimon’s bloody dead body in the last scene.  There was no tragedy in this Greek tragedy, not much Greek either in modern dress.