The Truth about a

In his interpretation of Antigone, Seamus Heaney says, ‘Nobody can be sure they are always right.’ Maureen O’Shaughnessy’s The Truth about A further attends to this idea through various readings of the myth as portrayed by Sophocles, Brecht, Ted Hughes, Anne Carson and, most particularly, Euripides. Set in contemporary Sydney, among a fictional underworld family, The Truth about A not only considers the issue of whether to obey the law or your conscience but delves into the nature of the creative impulse and the eternal bonds and chasms between generations. Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, provokes the fury of the crime-overlord Creon with her profound sense of honour, family and duty. But this spirit of defiance raises questions infinitely more complex than the brute facts of power and order, engendering a meditation on justice, ethics and personal judgement.