Long Island City’s theater scene delivers Greek classic ‘Antigone’

Antigone at the Secret Theatre, Hunters Point, Long Island City

You don’t need to go to Broadway, or even Brooklyn, to see great theater. Hunters Point boasts two excellent theaters, The Chocolate Factory whose new show, Red Metal Mailbox – [ ], is opening tomorrow night, and The Secret Theatre, whose latest production with The Queens Players, Sophocles’ Antigone, directed by Greg Cicchino, liQcity attended this past weekend.

The two theaters couldn’t be more different in terms of vision, approach, and repertory. While The Chocolate Factory excels in presenting new experimental and multimedia work, The Secret Theatre presents classics from the theater repertory, whether it’s Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, produced beautifully last fall with just the right proportion of kitch, or the classic Hamlet, coming up in April.

Within a few minutes of the Secret Theatre’s Antigone, I was gradually drawn into Sophocles’ moral universe: a world where the will of the gods cannot be defied, a world of strong egos, of self-righteousness, of arrogance, betrayal, and tragic grief. We 21st-century New Yorkers may see a world with many conceptions of right and wrong, without one firm moral center, but there is still a part of our psyche that sees the world the way Sophocles does.

Antigone at the Secret Theatre, Hunters Point, Long Island City

The challenge for a theater company, in presenting such an old work, is to break through the audience’s layers of skepticism and cynicism, without letting us feel manipulated. In the end, the simplicity and boldness of this production succeeded marvelously; in the acting and direction there was artifice without any duplicity. All of the six actors playing supporting roles doubled as members of the chorus, who chanted in rhyme in between scenes to narrate parts of the story; they put masks on to play particular characters, and took them off to rejoin the chorus.

The acting was superb across the board, revealing the Queens Players to be a very strong company. The stand-out performance was Katie Braden, who managed to capture the message and tragedy of the whole play within a few brief minutes.

Antigone has only one week left at The Secret Theatre–go see it! $15, March 25-28, 8pm, The Secret Theatre, 44-02 23rd Street, 718.392.0722

• The Secret Theatre [website]

–Posted by Sami Abu Shumays

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