An Intellectual `Antigone'

"Antigone" by Jean Anouilh. Directed by Daniel Renner. Produced by Intiman Theatre, Seattle Center, Tuesdays-Sundays, through Aug. 22. $11.50-$21. 626-0782.

French playwright Jean Anouilh wrote "Antigone," his interpretation of the Greek tragedy by Sophocles, in 1944. At the time France was still under Nazi occupation, and still ruled by the collaborationist Vichy regime.

Antigone's legendary defiance of authority, and her self-sacrifice for moral and religious principles, must have had powerful contemporary implications for Anouilh. And the play's classical source material made it acceptable to the Germans, who monitored Parisian stages for any overtly "decadent" or anti-Facist expressions.

Watching the current production of "Antigone" at the Intiman Theatre, one can see why the Nazis might have let Anouilh's adaptation slip by - and why some even praised it.

Though the leading character is viewed as a figure of unshakeable courage, Anouilh also challenges her belief system and strips away her romantic illusions. Plus he builds a more compelling, detailed case than Sophocles did for Antigone's adversary, King Creon of Thebes, a canny ruler who ranks pragmatism over principle.

At the Intiman, Daniel Renner's forthright staging and Barbra Bray's new translation of the script get down to those cases quickly.

Renner's program notes, the modern dress and the opening image of a bloody corpse behind a police barricade suggest an au courant "Antigone" evoking post-Reagan, post-Los Angeles riots, moderate-Democratic-ticket 1992. But the 1 1/2-hour, intermissionless production stays more attuned to early French Existentialism: cerebral, talky, and stark.

As the condensed one-person chorus, actress Tamu Gray crisply introduces the story and ironically forecasts the characters' fates.

By giving her brother Polyneices a proper burial, idealistic Antigone (Kelly Brooks) has defied a royal edict of her uncle Creon (Frank Corrado). (Polyneices died in a battle for control of Thebes.)

Antigone expects to be executed for this act of conscience. So she bids anguished farewell to her childhood nurse (Gaynor Sterchi), sister Ismene (Ann Buchanan), and fiance, Creon's son Haemon (James Marsters), and grieves for her curtailed innocence and youth.

But in the less stilted, more caustic scenes to follow, she faces off with Creon. They debate which is preferable: a compromised life or a noble death.

Corrado, with his plummy voice and managerial assurance, makes the king's cynical world view almost irrefutable. Yet in the end it's clear why plain spoken, vulnerable-looking Brooks sticks to her guns - and embraces death as Antigone's only honorable option.

Though the show marks Renner's directoral debut at Intiman, he has been successfully overseeing the theater's Living History program. That project brings actors into schools to perform dramatic scenes, and involve students in related ethical/historical discussions.

The moral passions and ambiguities in "Antigone" make it a good catalyst for moral inquiry. But as drama, it often favors rhetoric at the expense of dynamism.

While Anouilh's modernist, minimalist approach to Greek tragedy was novel in the '40s, it now seems stiff, even smug. The characters represent philosophical positions rather than vivid states of being.

Thankfully, there's some comic relief - ironically, from a trio of royal guards drawn as embodiments of the wine-drinking, no-nothing, self-centered masses. As the most verbal guard, Rick Tutor's gabby naturalness livens things up considerably.

Framed by the sleek, squared classical archway of David Zinn's set, the rest of the cast keeps things moving in a generally unmannered, intelligent fashion. And Renner's direction never gets in their way.

But while "Antigone" can hook the intellect, it may just be too cooly diagrammatic to move the heart - or call forth the messy, unresolved existential dilemmas of our own day.