Seamus Heaney's translation of Sophocles' Antigone rightly refuses to lie down. I first heard it at the Abbey, Dublin in 2004, where it was muffled by a ludicrously over-decorated production. Whatever niggles I may have about Lucy Pitman-Wallace's Nottingham Playhouse revival, it matches the surging clarity of the text.
Heaney leaves us in no doubt about the political resonances of Creon's punishment of Antigone for her determined burial of her brother: this Creon is a man who argues "whoever isn't for us is against us" and claims the dead Polyneices "terrorised us". Topical parallels aside, Heaney shows the play survives through its dramatisation of an eternal conflict: the inflexibility of state power confronts the instinctive morality of the individual. And Heaney subtly underlines the dialectical opposition by having Creon resort to neo-Shakespearean pentameters, while headstrong Antigone speaks in impulsive three-beat lines.
Pitman-Wallace's production respects the austere beauty of Heaney's version. Individuals emerge from the 10-strong chorus. Abby Ford's Antigone, frail in form and tough in spirit, runs towards her doom like an eager bride. Paul Bentall's Creon proves the Theban king is an ultimately tragic figure who has "wived and fathered death." But, while setting the choruses to Mick Sands' music is perfectly valid, the accompanying movement suggests an aerobics class. What really matters, however, is that Heaney's text takes us straight to the heart of Sophocles.
· Until Sept 29. Box office: 0845 120 7550
