Theater Festival - Antigone at last, almost

There are the great tragedies of Antiquity. And then there's what happens when a peculiar troupe decides to tackle them. Brace yourselves - the evening promises to be unforgettable, but not necessarily for the reasons you might expect.

Les Tréteaux de Louveciennes present a play by Claude Monteil, a theatrical UFO that plays with the codes of the performing arts to explode them before your very eyes.

It all starts with a noble and ambitious idea: to stage Antigone, the famous and timeless tragedy by Sophocles. A powerful, demanding text that has spanned the centuries. A work that deserves the best.

Except that the troupe charged with bringing it to the stage is... shall we say... endearing. Clumsy. Unpredictable. A band of broken arms brimming with good will, but whose rehearsals should have alerted everyone much earlier. Things go wrong, and tensions flare behind the scenes.

And that's the strength of this play: it plays on two levels at once. On the one hand, the solemnity of Antigone and her tragic destiny. On the other, the comic and very real disaster of a performance that goes haywire. Between the two, the audience doesn't quite know where to look - and that's precisely where the genius of the work lies.

It's a comedy that pays homage to the theater while poking tender fun at it, carried by actors who give their all to make this beautiful misfire as successful as possible.