Antigone [on strike], Park Theatre

Last Updated on July 9, 2025

Modern immersive re-telling of Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone

Antigone [on strike], Park Theatre Finsbury Park - Review

Antigone [on strike] is a piece of political immersive theatre...Take someone you’re happy to argue with about it on the way home.

Event Type: Event

Event Attendance Mode: OfflineEventAttendanceMode

Event Status: EventScheduled

Performer: Organization

Start Date: 2025-02-03 09:53

End Date: 2025-02-22 09:53

Availability: InStock

Availability Starts: 2025-02-03T09:53:36

Editor's Rating:
3

The contrast of the lightbox stage set with the dark rows of seats for Park Theatre’s Antigone [on strike] is starkly black and white. Yet the topics covered are fuzzy and grey. Meant to be a replica of the House of Commons, the audience is seated on opposite sides, facing each other across the action, in the manner of MPs sat in Parliament. Interactive keypads are handed out to audience members, by the cast upon arrival. The actors are not hiding in their dressing rooms, indeed they are mingling, smiling at audience members as they arrive. Like slightly awkward outside training facilitators at a company away-day. 

Antigone [on strike] is a piece of political immersive theatre. It only lasts ninety minutes, there’s no interval. It’s thought-provoking on matters of how the media influences politics and public reactions to issues around immigration, human rights and extremism. Take someone you’re happy to argue with about it on the way home.

Four actors make up the play; a fifth – our ISIS bride in a hijab – appears in a FaceTime call projected on a panel above the Speaker’s chair. Conveniently, it has the same dimensions as a mobile phone screen. In the middle, there’s a raised stage that doubles, at times, as a News Night-style political TV talk show set. On a white wall, the audience has beamed pie charts of their votes’ results and sometimes news cycle mayhem. 

Ty (Sorcha Brooks, TV credit – The Suzy Lamplugh Mystery), switches between various personae. When speaking via her microphone, she is either our host or a remote figure with the dispassion of an Alexa speaker (possibly a government SPAD). She can be a sanctimonious right-wing discussion panelist or alternatively an opposition MP in the chamber.

Antiya (Hiba Medina, theatre credit – You Bury Me), is our Antigone figure, a university-educated twenty-something Muslim woman.  While much of the template of Antigone [on strike] owes much to the Shamima Begum case, the relationships between and the characters’ destiny remain truer to Sophocles. Antiya’s sister, Esmeh (Hanna Khogali, seen virtually, theatre credit – Succession Theme is my Ringtone), is trapped in a Syrian refugee camp, with her young baby, having left the UK having been groomed online by a man who convinces her to join ISIS. 

Antiya wants to bring Esmeh and her baby home; she begins a hunger strike (hence “on strike”) and aided by social media, a media frenzy ensues. Caught up in this is her romantic interest, Eammon (Ali Hadji-Heshmati, TV Credits – Bad Education and Holby City). Eammon has put his university studies on pause to be an Amnesty International volunteer and also happens to be the son of the Home Secretary. Creighton (Phil Cheadle, Film credit – 1917) as Home Secretary – and wannabe Prime Minister – represents the Greek Gods. He has the power to change Esmeh’s fate but is perhaps more interested in his own. 

Antigone [on strike] is written by Alexander Raptotasios, founder of Ferodo Bridges CIC, a theatre company creating political theatre. He has directed docu-fiction film, commissioned by the Greek National Opera, and an immersive rave experience in 2023 called Apocalypse NY. 

Ty highlighted to us at the start, that tragic Greek figures such as Antigone, Elektra and Oedipus are bound by fate, their destinies pre-ordained. Contrast this with the Ancient Greek people, who were establishing the earliest democracies and taking fate into their own hands. Instead of everything being decided by the Gods.

It’s not much of a spoiler to point out that Antiya and Eammon will die, sort of Romeo and Juliet style, as do their characters in Sophocles. The problem with Antigone [on strike] is that it feels like watching the kind of real-life political brouhaha that much of modern society, myself included, is numbed by. Antiya wails that “nobody’s going to care”, and she was right, I didn’t much care about any of the characters. The acting was good, albeit a bit soap opera. I couldn’t suspend belief enough to care about Antiya’s fate. The costumes were deliberately mundane, and the set as mentioned already, monochrome and blank. Indeed, I didn’t care very deeply about what I was watching. It all felt too much like what I see on TV. On a philosophical level though, I found Antigone [on strike] more interesting.

Here we were voting (although not as often as I’d have liked). Being told that we’re influencing the outcome of the show. Frequently though, I’ve voted grey area answers or “don’t know”. Yet the pie charts seem only interested in delivering yes or no statistics that add up to 100%. There are fewer than 90 audience members in Park Theatre’s intimate Park 90 space. One person saying “don’t know” would be more than one per cent. It was as if I could see, in real time, that my vote wasn’t being included. I concluded that the audience voting process in Antigone [on strike] was a red herring. Whatever we voted for, the outcome was going to be the same. I felt sure the pie charts were pre-written. Applying this logic to real life felt extremely depressing. What if this whole play was a cypher that we think we’re voting to influence things, but it changes nothing? It’s a good job I’m a stoic.  

Antigone [on strike] until 22^nd February
Park Theatre
Clifton Terrace
Finsbury Park
London N4 3JP

Check our preview for more off-West End London Theatre