Final play of season

The cast has been confirmed for Antigone Exits by Nina Segal, directed by Jeff James, the final summer season play in Chichester’s Minerva Theatre (September 26-October 17).

Antigone’s brother has died in a bloody civil war. The king – her uncle – has forbidden anyone to bury the body. Antigone is going to bury the body anyway.

Twenty-five centuries after Antigone, seven performers gather to re-tell the tale of what is buried and what comes of it. Ancient Greece crashes into the contemporary as Sophocles' classic tragedy shines a “scorching” light onto our current world.

The cast is: Testimony Adegbite (The Primrose Railway Children) as Messenger; Brandon Bassir (The Grapes of Wrath National Theatre, Love’s Labour’s Lost RSC) as Haemon; Max Bennett (Slow Horses, Poldark, Titus Andronicus RSC, Macbeth Shakespeare’s Globe) as Creon; Nina Cassells (Ballet Shoes National Theatre, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Bridge Theatre) as Antigone; Anushka Chakravarti (The Crucible, Our Generation NT/CFT) as Ismene; Melody Chikakane Brown (Redlands CFT, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold UK tour) as Tiresias; and Lizzy Watts (Strife CFT, Hedda Gabler National Theatre) as Eurydice.

Nina Segal’s modern adaptation brings Antigone into the present day. Her previous work includes Cow | Deer (Royal Court), We Are The Lucky Ones (Dutch National Opera) and Shooting Hedda Gabler (Rose Theatre).

Jeff James directs; his recent directing work includes Shooting Hedda Gabler at the Rose Theatre and his own adaptations of Persuasion at the Manchester Royal Exchange and Winter’s Tale at the Dailes Theatre, Latvia.

The production will be designed by Alex Lowde; the lighting designer is Jo Joelson, music and sound designer Kieran Lucas, movement director James Cousins, and casting director Bryony Jarvis-Taylor.

Tickets from Chichester Festival Theatre.