Communicado filter as much light as possible into a very dark tale without losing any of its potency. It is less exuberant than some of their previous productions, but has the same tightly choreographed feel and brilliant visual sense, while making the most of the play’s bareness.
THE INDEPENDENT June 1989

Enacted in front of a timber triptych, the new translation by Maureen Lawrence is strongly delivered by Gerry Mulgrew and Patricia Ross in the title role….it is not often that any company is bold enough to tackle drama of this magnitude and take it on tour
THE SCOTSMAN June 1989

WITH their production of Maureen Lawrence's new translation of Sophocles' Antigone, Communicado have produced a concise adaptation of a classic that is laden with modern relevance and is definably Scottish. In the first show he has not directed, Gerry Mulgrew holds the stage with a Presbyterian Creon whose paranoia increases as he rejects the advice of son, citizens, and soothsayer to enforce his decree that Antigone be punished for defying his edict that her rebellious brother be denied a proper burial. He condemns Tiresias with the words: ''The priesthood was always mercenary'', ignoring the wisdom that he has no right to rule the dead. The comparison with the attitude of the Free Presbyterian Church to Lord Mackay's attendance at the funerals of his Roman Catholic colleagues is a direct line to 1989. Earlier he has faced Antigone (Patricia Ross) and Ismene (Sharon Muircroft) in exchanges that emphasise the debate in the play on the position of women and the relationship of the individual with the State. Scottish inflexions in some of the voices apart, the most obvious accent is in the voices of Myra McFadyen and Maureen Carr who provide the chorus of Theben women, populating the stage in a show that relies on the doubling of the principals. While Robert Pickavance's direction is in the Communicado style, with the exception of the opening prologue, accomplished with movement and Adrian Johnston's excellent music alone, there is a lack of the visual panache one has come to expect of the company. But Lawrence's gripping text and intimate details in the acting, particularly from Mulgrew whose expressive hands can hardly bear to touch the dead body of his son Haemon (Colin Hurley) in the final scene, are very nearly sufficient compensation.
Keith Bruce 5 Jul 1989-THE HERALD