The best history lesson I ever had at school was when I was about 10 years old. Teacher Mr Pepper sat on the edge of his table and got each of us kids to play a role in the story of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I know – gripping stuff. Sarah – you’re Eleanor, and Ross – you’re King Louis. Now you die and Christopher, you’re King Edward and Sarah, you and Christopher get married now that Ross is dead… Etc, etc; you get the picture. It explained it in a simple but vivid way, and it was one of the very few History lessons I ever enjoyed.

I thought of this lesson as the opening minutes of Nina Segal’s modern take on the Antigone story, Antigone Exits, started to unfold. Two reasons: the clarity of the storytelling and the sense of involvement – even though this isn’t an interactive or immersive production. You know the old advice about how to give a presentation? Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. There is a sense of that here; occasionally feeling that we are being told what is happening rather than being shown it. Consequently, there is also a slight feeling of repetition, which ought to be unnecessary in a production that barely reaches 65 minutes in length (no interval).

Alex Lowde’s set certainly grabs your attention from the start. Seven actors perch, somewhat precariously, on a white, tilted abstract disc affixed to the back wall. I can’t have been the only person wondering quite how they kept their balance there; it – and they – must be covered with an invisible Velcro. Some rocks lead down to the bare stage, with a microphone dangling down from the ceiling in the middle; very stark and effective. Jo Joelson’s lighting design creates all manners of colourful atmosphere; engaging, confrontational, enigmatic. Visually, the audience is totally engaged.

From their precarious perch, the actors start to tell the story of Antigone. According to Sophocles’ play, she wanted to bury the body of her dead brother Polynices, but that has been forbidden on pain of death by the new king, Antigone’s uncle Creon. Antigone, however, unlike her sister Ismene, is no pushover. And when she breaks Creon’s law, she sets in motion a sequence of events that can only ever have one, catastrophic, conclusion.

As the story progresses, the actors clamber down from their disc and use the stage, bare and featureless, until at one point Antigone pours a sticky black liquid from a petrol can all around the edges of the stage, in a modern equivalent of a libation scene, creating a perfect, gloopy circle. At first, the actors skilfully avoid treading in it, keeping their trainers and the floor nice and clean. But as soon as the actor playing Tiresias dips her hand in what by now looks like spreading molasses, again there’s an inevitability as to what happens next, and there’s no option for cleanliness.

You’re always aware that the seven actors on stage are precisely that – actors playing roles. Each of them at some point breaks from the narrative, using the dangling microphone to offer a seemingly personal story from their past, which in some way relates to death. Whether it be coping with widowhood, or a child playing with the body of a dead fox, or several other experiences, these side observations enhance the sense of artifice over reality, and give an insight into how an actor can use their own personal experiences to inform their performance. Only when a side narrative from one of the actors raises the subject of Gaza do you get the sense that the writing and production is not quite sufficiently robust to involve that important and very relevant subject without feeling that it has been shoehorned in. It’s an ambitious link to make, and unfortunately it doesn’t quite work.

That said, the acting throughout is first rate, with immaculate clarity of diction and riveting, engrossing delivery. Max Bennett gives an excellent performance as Creon, regal but not bullying, determined that the law must be upheld or else he will look like an idiot, until he is convinced to change course when it is too late. Nina Cassells’ Antigone is equally determined, totally accepting of her fate with calm inevitability; no argument will sway her in the other direction. With all the other characters trying to convince Creon that he must backtrack on his edict, except for Anushka Chakravarti’s Ismene who blames Antigone as the wilful author of her own destiny, the battle of wits that unfolds can only have one conclusion. Antigone Exits via the gap at the top of the white backdrop disc, which becomes the entrance to the cave where she will die. Afterwards, other actors also exit through that gap, denoting their characters’ own, subsequent, deaths.

It’s a powerful one-act play that tells the story of Antigone with great clarity and attempts to put a relevant spin on it for a modern audience. Theatrical, and well-acted, it certainly keeps the audience’s attention and gives you plenty of scope to think about it and discuss it afterwards. And I had forgotten quite what a great track David Bowie’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide is.

Four They’re Jolly Good Fellows!