Another Antigone

by A.R. Gurney

After many years of teaching the classics at a New England university, Henry Harper is not surprised by much and particularly not by precocious students who want to rewrite his beloved Greek masterpieces to reflect current sociopolitical concerns. So when a gifted young Jewish student, Judy Miller, announces that she intends to submit an updated, anti-nuclear version of Antigone in place of the formal paper he has assigned to her, Henry is adamant in his refusal. Unfortunately, Judy (who needs the credit from his course to graduate) is as stubborn as her professor, and when she resolves to defy him and produce her play on campus, tensions begin to mount. Judy also lodges a complaint with the university grievance committee, which elicits a visit from the dean not only to plead with Henry to soften his stand but also to warn him that accusations of anti-Semitism (however unfounded) have arisen. Before long it is evident that what is at issue for Henry is not just a matter of academic integrity but of his very livelihood. Inexorably, he feels himself becoming Creon to Judy's Antigone and, in the final essence, even his willingness to relent and give her a passing grade is insufficient to save him from the unhappy fate that must inevitably follow when conscience, for whatever good reasons, yields to expediency.

Genres: Plays, Drama, School, Theatre

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

A.R. Gurney was an American playwright and novelist.

Reviews

[Steve Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just got this in the mail and read it one sitting, which isn’t hard.

It’s a good play. Really good. Great characterizations, and it has interesting way of tying the play into a classical theme.

The antagonist in this is a classics professor, who specializes in teaching his favorite subject, the play “Antigone“ by Sophocles. He butts heads with one of his female students, the protagonist, who is Jewish. As it turns out, he’s a closet antisemite.

By the end of the play, you realize that they have both become reflections of the protagonist and antagonist in the play “Antigone“ itself.

Update after third reading: I’m doing a staged reading of this in about 10 days – April 2024 – and each time I dive into it I discern something new about the character of Henry.

Gurney was brilliant, and an academic himself. It appears to me that he put certain flaws in Henry’s intellectual approach towards Greek tragedy that buttressed the character’s bigoted view of Jews. I may write an essay on it. If I do, I’ll incorporate some of my observations into an update of this review.

Regardless, I can’t read this play without joyfully ruminating on Henry’s flaws. It’s extremely stimulating.

[Juliette II · Rating 5 out of 5]

This show is brutally tragic. Oleanna adjacent, this show is poignant and controversial. Would be extremely timely to put on now in light of the war in Palestine. An excellent show with four rich characters and a single, versatile Greek set. I will direct this show.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the best play I've read this year.

[Kendall Wienecke · Rating 3 out of 5]

there's a few stand out moments in here, important thoughts that I'm sure were seeds for the creation of this play. but it suffers the tragic fate that many classical adaptations do, of trying to be too intellectual and self-deprecating about academia at the same time. It's simply not relatable to the general public who won't care to remember the details of a play they read in 9th grade English, and too on the nose to be super interesting to a classicist. It DOES, however, make a very interesting read in 2025-- our recent cultural context for Israel, anti-semitism, and bigotry by academics in an increasingly conservative American climate ties interestingly with the themes in Another Antigone. It's a quick read, but don't think I'd put it up any time soon.

[John Perine · Rating 3 out of 5]

An incredible concept that starts strong but loses steam in the second half and becomes a bit too overt in its politicization for me (which is likely intentional but doesn’t land well). I think the play overall would be much more powerful if Judy’s rewriting of Antigone was better (again, likely intentional, as she’s a college senior with no creative writing training). Overall a worthwhile read, but I definitely understand why no one does this play.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This play hits a lot of things I really like--adaptation of Greek tragedy, a campus play, Jewish issues, metatheatrical and metaliterary themes. Set in a traditional college in Boston, the play is about Judy Miller, a Jewish senior who rewrites Antigone in the context of the nuclear arms race as a final project for a Greek tragedy course. The professor, Henry Harper, sees this as an affront to Sophocles and refuses to grade the play as a final, which would endanger Judy's ability to graduate and move into the fine financial industry job she's already secured. Harper has a consistently narrow vision of Greek tragedy--a conservative Classicist--and denigrates pretty much any suggestion that the Greeks can be meaningful for the modern world, rather than exclusively important in themselves as great works of art. The situation is complicated by Harper's tenuous position. There have been repeated suggestions that his sweeping comparisons of Greek and Jewish civilization/world views are anti-Semitic, and his courses are consistently under-enrolled. As Miller's play gains support from the community (though only tenuously from the college administration), more pressure is put on Harper to grade her generously if he wants to keep his job. Simultaneously, Miller becomes more and more strident, not only in her push for nuclear disarmament, but also in a broader critique of nationalism, capitalism, and the WASP-ish world her whole life has been oriented toward. But she also becomes more antagonistic of Harper. As he mentions/implies several times, their clash is inevitable. Finally, both characters effectively end up renouncing things they had desired: Miller abandons the career-trajectory she had been on, and Harper self-imposes an exile from teaching. Like Creon and Antigone in Sophocles, we can see in retrospect that each character's fate was inevitable.
https://youtu.be/Tvgwl_ajW2s

[Isaac Ehrlich · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read Sophocles' Antigone, but I found this one to be well-thought out and in some places, timeless.

[Aleigha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. Just ugh.

[Kelly Macfarlane · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting meld of the Antigone myth with the academic novel, but not entirely successful with its use of Antigone but interesting nonetheless

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this in a high school English class, and just did not understand why we had to read it. Mainly, I thought the entire premise of Judy Miller being "another Antigone" was way off-base. When I read Antigone, I sympathized with her because her desire for her brother to have a proper burial was selfless, and she stood up for an actual belief. Judy's big act of bravery, however, is simply trying to write her own version of the Antigone play instead of a final paper for her English class. Instead of just sucking it up and writing the paper, she whines about it and fights it. If she wanted to write the play so badly, couldn't she have done it on her own time, without it being an assignment?

Henry Harper was supposed to be the villain of this play, but I found myself taking his side rather than Judy's when reading it. I didn't find it outlandish at all that he demanded she follow the rules; after all, many people had had tried to do other assignments instead of a paper before, and they all ended up writing the final paper. Why should Judy get special treatment?

The play wasn't poorly written; I just thought the comparison the play was obviously trying to draw was invalid.