Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Fiercely feminist plays with a focus on reclaiming women’s bodies: Anna Ziegler’s take on ANTIGONE and Aya Ogawa’s MEAT SUIT

• By drediman
• March 17, 2026
• No Comments

In recents weeks of my Off-Broadway theater going, I encountered a pair of fiercely feminist plays that centered on the reclamation of women’s bodies from a world that seems determined to dictate how we perceive and/or lay claim on them. As per usual, read on for my thoughts on these visceral new works.

ANTIGONE (THIS PLAY I READ IN HIGH SCHOOL)
The Public Theater
Through April 5

In our current tense times, theater-makers have been turning to Greek tragedies, tapping into their timeless ability to induce catharsis in troubled audiences. Earlier this season on Broadway, we had Robert Icke’s potently updated version of Oedipus featuring the knockout pairing Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. Now over at the Public Theater, you can find Antigone (This Play I Read in High School) (RECOMMENDED), Anna Ziegler’s new adaptation of Sophocles’ tale, which reframes the tale, recalibrating the well-worn characters and their predicaments/motivations in contemporary terms. It all starts with Ziegler’s framing device of having the play be narrated by a contemporary figure, a seemingly meek and diminutive woman whose own life challenges have been haunted by Sophocles play ever since having first read the play in high school. Both mirroring and counterpointing Antigone’s story in striking ways, the young woman’s own narrative yields to a unique re-telling of Antigone, thereby merging past and present. More specifically, instead of standing up to the newly crowed King Creon to ensure her brother’s proper burial, Antigone now instead crusades for the right to have an abortion — which is outlawed in the land — thereby turning the focus squarely on the title character’s fight to have domain over her own body. What remains consistent with Sophocles’ original is the character’s staunch refusal to back down on her beliefs. As played with raw intensity by Susannah Perkins, Antigone is a restless and outspoken teenager whose actions can be easily interpreted as reckless. Thankfully, Perkins casts just the right balance between punkish rebelliousness and well-earned righteousness, bringing welcome complexity to the role. As the narrator, Tony-winner Celia Keenan-Bolger imparts disarming honesty and a lost quality that contrasts powerfully with Perkins’ relentlessness and resolve. And as Creon, Tony Shalhoub (another Tony-winner) is indecisive and impish, which levels the playing field between king and niece and imbues their impassioned debates with dramatically compelling murk. If at times Ziegler’s play is tonally wobbly, director Tyne Rafaeli’s confident staging goes a long way in bringing focus and clarity to the proceedings.

MEAT SUIT, OR THE SHITSHOW OF MOTHERHOOD
Second Stage Theater
Closed

Also recently, I had the opportunity to attend Second Stage Theater’s Off-Broadway production of Aya Ogawa‘s MEAT SUIT, or the shitshow of motherhood (RECOMMENDED), which recently shuttered at Pershing Square Signature Center. Culled from actual interviews from women’s unfiltered experiences of motherhood, the piece is a theatrical fantasia that’s unafraid to get its hands dirty, leaving no stone unturned as it covers the good, the bad, and the ugly (and the really ugly). The diverse ensemble cast — each of them mothers — throw themselves into the often unhinged, tapestry-like play, no doubt tapping into their own stories to inform their portrayals of both mothers and children. Comprised of a parade of broadly played skits that cover the gamut of mother/child and mother/mother situations, MEAT SUIT draws on vaudevillian tradition and Saturday Night Live type comedy sketches get its point across. Sprinkled throughout are affectingly delivered karaoke like songs, which bring poetic introspection and gravitas to the these snapshots. There’s an appealing unruliness to it all that counteracts the often single blaring note of the highly physical performances (which makes the production seem longer than its 100-minute running time). Although these vignettes are largely written and performed to elicit hearty belly laughs, there’s an undercurrent of emotional fragility that occasionally rears its head, at times jarringly and unexpectedly. Like the hit production of Prince Faggot earlier this season, perhaps the most revealing segment of the play is when the admirably game actresses break character — and the fourth wall — to share their own achingly candid stories of their own doubts, concerns, and fears as mothers themselves. One of the most immediately striking aspects of the production are the outrageous and organic designs by Jian Jung, particularly the grotesquely disproportionate and exaggerated costumes, which render the various women (and children) of the play merely as fleshy punching bags.