Sophocles (496-406 BC) is one of the three greatest Greek classic tragedy playwrights, along with Aeschylus (525-456 BC) and Euripides (480-406 BC).

Son of a wealthy merchant in Athens, Sophocles would have enjoyed all the comforts of a thriving Greek empire. He studied all of the arts.

At the age of 28, he defeated Aeschylus, "the father of Athenian tragedy," in the annual competitive festival of Dionysus. More than 120 plays were to follow and would go on to win 18 first prizes, never failing to take at least second.

The great innovator of the theatre was the first to add a third actor. He also abolished the trilogic form.

Aeschylus, for example, had used three tragedies to tell a single story. Sophocles chose to make each tragedy a complete entity in itself -- as a result, he had to pack all of his action into the shorter form, and this clearly offered greater dramatic possibilities.

Many researches also credit him with the invention of scene-painting and periaktoi -- painted prisms.

"Sophocles writes masterful works of plot and suspense. His plays are perfectly structured," said Wang Yi, a drama critic in Beijing.

But only seven complete plays of Sophocles' vast dramatic output have survived. Among them, Antigone is one of the earliest. It predates Oedipus the King, the first play of the Theban cycle and which is generally considered his greatest work, by 10 years, and Oedipus at Colonus, the play which deals with events immediately preceding Antigone, by some 35 years.

The other survivors are Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, and Philoctetes.

Sophocles was 55 when he wrote Antigone in 441 BC. For the Athenian democracy it was a time of high expectation. The city had grown into a great empire since the defeat of the Persian invader 40 years before, and was now at the height of its expansive pride.

Power was at the Athenians' command but restless intellectual change was in the air.

Written under these circumstances, Antigone is a play of ideas. Probably the most important single fact about the years of Pericles and mounting Athenian power is the novelty of political and philosophical ideas, their pervasiveness throughout all levels of the new democratic society, the freedom for all citizens to express them and for all citizens to share in the actions that led from them.

It is not difficult to see, however, why Antigone might have survived while other papyri crumbled to dust.

Its theme is an accessible and eternal one. Should citizens follow their consciences or the laws of the state? Can the rule of law be truly legitimate if it flies in the face of the traditional bonds that hold the state together?

Sophocles' Antigone is the only Greek tragedy to pose a moral and political problem at its core that has meaning for every age, place and people.

"Illustrating the rival claims of the state and the individual conscience, Antigone is an excellent example for the modern social dramatist," said Gang Zi, a Beijing drama critic.

In 1988, Harbin Modern Drama Theatre in Heilongjiang Province produced the tragedy for the first time in China and the production was invited to Athens for the Fourth International Ancient Greece Drama Festival in the same year.

Luo Niansheng (1904-90), professor of Greek Literature from Peking University, who translated many Greek classic dramas into Chinese including Antigone, went to the festival with the theatre.

The Hebei Provincial Hebei Bangzi Theatre also staged the story in 1988 in the form of a Chinese local opera -- Hebei Bangzi.

Last year, the Beijing Hebei Bangzi Theatre staged the production and performed at the 11th International Ancient Greece Drama Festival in Athens.

But it is Beijing's theatre-goers who will now savor the original Greek flavor of the play.

Directed by Niketi Kodouri, this is a powerful and accomplished production. Well-known Greek stage actress Lydia Koniokordu stars as Antigone. She commands the stage with enormous physical and emotional power.

Synopsis of Antigone

Antigone tells the story of a passionate young woman who refuses to submit to earthly authority when it forbids a proper burial for her brother Polynices.

Antigone was the daughter born of the incestuous relationship between Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. After Oedipus had blinded himself in self-punishment, Antigone and her sister Ismene served as his guides, following him into exile.

When he died, Antigone returned to Thebes, where her brothers Eteocles and Polynices were at war. It was originally agreed the two should govern, but Eteocles, the elder, refused and eventually both were killed in war.

Power then fell to Creon, brother of Jocasta, who became king and ordered Eteocles to be given an honorable burial.

According to Greek belief, the act of burial was necessary for entry into the next world. According to Greek custom, it was granted on the battlefield to the bodies of even the enemies. For Polynices, however, Creon ordered no burial and the Greek equivalent of eternal damnation.

Unwilling to let the body be defiled, Antigone buried him. She was sentenced to be buried alive in a cave -- even though she was betrothed to his son Haemon.

After the blind prophet Tiresias proves that the gods are on Antigone's side, Creon changes his mind -- but too late. He goes first to bury Polynices, but Antigone has already hanged herself. When Creon arrives at the tomb, Haemon attacks him and then kills himself. When the news of their deaths is reported, Creon's wife Eurydice takes her own life.

(China Daily March 6, 2003)