Too Much Memory

Description
**** (four stars) No, Chuck Mee does not have a monopoly on postmodern updates of Greek tragedies. Playwright Keith Reddin and his coauthor-director, Meg Gibson, give Mee a run for his drachmas with the earnest and fitfully engrossing Too Much Memory (coyly but accurately described as an “adaptation of an adaptation of a retranslation”). Reddin and Gibson present the story of the rebellious Antigone (Laura Heisler) and her authoritarian uncle, Creon (Peter Jay Fernandez), as a thinly veiled parable for our wartime moment. Our heroine insists on honorable funerals for her dead rebel brothers; Creon forbids it; she does it anyway, and dies for her deeds. As in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone (from which this modern-dress play draws inspiration), the politics here aren’t exactly revolutionary—it would be more interesting if Antigone articulated a defense of terrorists, or at least evoked the enormity of the Iraq War bloodshed. This criticism is not to slight Heisler’s emotionally searing work; in the course of 70 minutes, she takes us on a harrowing journey from righteousness to animal terror. Fernandez makes a cool, inwardly troubled foil to Heisler’s heart-on-sleeve agonist, and Louis Cancelmi brings unexpected flashes of passion to his role as Antigone’s lover, Haemon. Nearly stealing every scene is the superb Martin Moran, whose inquisitive Everyman chorus connects this ancient ritual to our times with deftness and touching sensitivity. Minimally but sharply staged by Gibson (using chairs and orange tape on the floor), Too Much Memory helps you remember why we do these bloody old tragedies, again and again.—David Cote, Theater Editor