I remember reading Antigone so well; it was the first play that was on the curriculum when I started high school; it was the first time that I really explored the meaning of the word ‘dilemma.’ It was powerful, heart wrenching, I kept replaying the themes over and over in my head. The basic premise so simple and yet the permutations endless. When I think about it now, the conflict between state law and natural law is so relevant to the crisis our world seems to be rapidly descending into.

I think it is despicable that Alexander Zeldin claims that “The Other Place” is ‘after Antigone.’ Sure, he clearly wrote the play centuries after Sophocles wrote his masterpiece, but that is pretty much all the ‘after’ there is to it. Theatres should have a rule against deploying such cheap marketing tricks.

And this is not me being a purist. Antigone, dating back to around 440BC, is one of the Theban triad of tragedies, the source we look to when we explore the concept of tragedy in fact. So it really should give you pause for thought, when the audience seems to be laughing more often than it is not. And laughing at the most bizarre moments too. That being said, when is it not bizarre to laugh at a play trying to explore themes of paedophilic incest? Sure, I get the concept of comic relief, but in this case, it felt more like hysterics. Nervous laughing because the dialogues were so poor, the acting so awkward, the story line so confusing. The culmination was a lady sitting two rows in front of us bursting out with laughter as the uncle exclaims in faux agony – is this hell!? (or something along those lines).

I am racking my brain, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing positive that I could say about this endeavour. None of the characters really make sense, the concept of remodelling the house seems irrelevant to the broader narrative, there is a random bloke slash project manager slash family friend lurking around all the time, the time of day is unclear… There is also a weird obsession with real food on the stage, including the preparation of a three-egg omelette for three people. And to top it all off – the acting is not great either. Actually, quite a lot it is very poor… but then I guess there is a limit to what you can do with a line that involves shouting out ‘fuck’ six or seven times.

The only saving grace is that the play lasts less than 90 minutes with no interval. My conclusion – this is not Antigone, but Agony.