Jean Anouilh’s Antigone is a play of conflicts – conflicts between characters, conflicting principles and ideas, and the lead characters’ own inner conflicts. As with the Greek myth on which the tragedy is based, the story opens in the shadow of conflict, as the city of Thebes emerges from a civil war in which both of Antigone’s brothers have been killed.

The new king, Creon – Antigone’s uncle – has given one brother, Eteocles, a state burial, but the body of Polynices has been left to rot as a warning to insurgents. Despite Creon’s decree that anyone attempting to bury the body will be executed, Antigone decides to give her brother the burial she feels he deserves, thus setting in motion the chain of events that makes tragedy inevitable.

The Oxford Theatre Guild’s production highlights the conflicts and tragedies of the play with great clarity, revealing the many layers of plot and characters in a manner both compelling and gripping.

Jenni Mackenzie’s Antigone is perhaps a little understated in the first half, but is nevertheless finely drawn, and we can identify with her wish to give her brother a decent burial, if not her stubborn determination to risk her own life to do so. She allows the character to develop strongly in the second half during her showdown with Creon, when her willingness to die for her beliefs becomes increasingly obsessive; ultimately her apparently noble gesture becomes a rather hollow victory. Joseph Kenneway’s Creon (pictured with Jenni Mackenzie) is a masterpiece of characterisation; this is a powerful and solid performance, in which the supposedly tyrannical ruler is revealed to be a man in turmoil, who imposes laws he hates out of a sense of duty. His flawed thinking costs him dearly. Other strong performances come from Nick Quartley as the Chorus, and Adam Potterton, who injects some comic relief as the First Guard.

Antigone continues at the Playhouse until Saturday. Box office: 01865 305305.