My first venture to the Fringe this year was a very good one. The Sky Is The Limit Theatre’s Regarding Antigone playing in the Solo Room at Tarragon is one of the best fringe shows I’ve seen.  It’s a one woman show written and performed by Banafsheh Hassani and directed by Art Babayants dealing with all the ways one can die tragically in a brutal, authoritarian state; beaten up by cops, stray bullet, “disappeared”, driven to suicide etc.

Hassani plays all the characters from the mother of a disappeared activist to a teenage girl driven to suicide to the last surviving member of a production of Antigone whose cast is being whittled down by police action.  She frequently comes out of character to narrate and even tell the audience what we are feeling so she has to change dramatic and emotional registers frequently and sometimes in pretty extreme ways.  It’s a very accomplished and often physically demanding performance.

The setting is stark.  She’s dressed in white, there’s a huge pool of “blood” on the floor and just a few props (all designed by Maryanna Chan).  There’s nowhere to hide for her or us.  The “action” is continuous and there’s a very clever symmetry to begin and end.   It’s an intense and compelling 45 minutes of theatre of a quality and seriousness unusual for the Fringe.  In fact, run time aside, this would not be out of place in, say, the Studio at Crow’s.

Photo credit: Philip Sawaia