"Hillbilly Antigone" is not an adaptation of Sophocles' tragedy. It is instead two hours of typically inventive Lookingglass stagecraft enriched by quirky bluegrass/early country songs written by Rick Sims, loosely riffing on the Greek original. It's sprawling and silly as we laugh at actors audaciously portraying hick hillbilly stereotypes.
Yet Sims and co-writer Heidi Stillman are having so much fun being imaginative that their production has little of the original Antigone's power. Sure, it's amusing to see Philip R. Smith's power-mad authority figure swagger around the stage (as if at times channeling a cocksure Elvis) as an old time religion preacher and county judge version of Creon, believing his will is that of God. It's nice to see how in love those crazy kids Antigone (a feisty Mattie Hawkinson) and Harmon are. But in spending so much time establishing the hillbilly way of life, this production takes the bite out of Sophocles' themes of individual responsibility, misuse of power and might versus right.
These still-timely themes are too bluntly overstated when they're not lost in all the new elements Sims has crammed into his story of hillbillies caught up in a passionately violent family feud. The original Antigone is about an individual girl standing up to an arrogant authority figure who refuses to bury her brother, but in this show, if Antigone has any crisis over burying her brother we don't see it; her thematically important confrontation with Creon is dispensed with in a unmemorable song busily staged by Stillman.
Antigone's beloved brother, a hyper-hillbilly only capable of petulant fury, is around to annoy us all the way through the first act, and it isn't really until the second act that Sims finally picks up the tragedy's familiar plot points. Just then, as if to be sure to hit all the stereotypes, he throws in an incest subplot to further steal focus from any real character development or dramatic build-up.
Lawrence E. DiStasi makes a big impression in a series of bit roles both comic and more somber and Sims, Christine Mary Dunford and Andrew White sound good singing tunes that make little persuasive impact. But the fleeting glimpses of creativity and talent here can't compensate for this show's overall school pageant-like clutter.
Lookingglass Theatre Company; Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave.; (312) 337-0665; $20-58. Through July 10; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; 6:30 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 3 p.m. & 8 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday
