Sometimes the bad guy is just more exciting. It happens in politics: more voters say they plan to vote "against Bush" than will vote "for Kerry." It happens even more often in theater: evildoers often steal the show from do-righters. But if a play's goal is to weigh alternatives, one good and one evil, a juicy villain can tip the scales right over.

That's what happens in One Year Lease's elegant production of Jean Anouilh's Antigone. Tella Storey performs the title role with beauty, poise, and that basic tool of American actors, an inner emotional truth. But this choice puts her at a disadvantage: Antigone isn't an emotional script, it's an intellectual one. As she debates her adversary, Storey lets her emotional reactions flit across her face. She's not overacting, but in this detached French play, she seems melodramatic.

Her opponent is Creon, a martinet running war-torn Thebes (Antigone, naturally, is a threat to Order). As Creon, Ariane Barbanell mesmerizes both Antigone and the audience. With ramrod-straight posture and a steely gaze, she carefully articulates Creon's argument. He's a political rationalist who understands compromise and practicality as well as the uses of a well-turned knife. Barbanell underplays Creon's Will to Power such that her Creon isn't immoral, he's amoral. And he steals the show from poor little Antigone.

If we listen to Creon's cool justification of tyranny, we'll quickly recognize his argument's flaws. But if we watch Barbanell, we'll get overwhelmed by a forceful personality. Maybe this is deliberate: Anouilh, an Existentialist, rewrote Sophocles' tragedy during the Nazi Occupation of France. Anouilh was encoding a critique of Fascism in the safe format of Greek myth; director Ianthe Demos deftly draws comparisons with Republican demagoguery. Antigone pits Existential Truth against the sort of social expediency that puts Order far above every other factor, including liberty.

Anouilh's weapon against the tyranny of Order is dramatic irony, which emphasizes the breach between what people say and what they do. His Chorus embodies irony, as does Marie-Pierre Beauséjour's unadorned and confident performance. She explains that Antigone, Creon, and the others aren't characters: they're archetypal cogs in a Tragedy Machine, playing roles that allow no deviation.

Demos accentuates this theme by having one character speak in Greek and another in French -- the text's two source languages. In fact, much of the production's style feels vaguely European, with Demos taking the staging into the territory of the Absurd. For the minor roles, stacks of sandbags stand in for bodies while prerecorded voice-overs deliver their lines. It's a puzzling choice, and a little distracting.

Even more oddly, Demos has set the play in modern Iraq, raising questions that she doesn't answer. She and costumer Kay Lee have dressed Creon, Antigone and the rest of the cast in beautiful indigenous robes; are they comparing Iraq's new leaders to Creon? The patchwork parliament of politicians and clerics is of a different, more ambiguous order than Anouilh's fascist. Demos leaves this discrepancy to float in our minds. A more sensible choice would be to set the play in contemporary America, where many of us, like Antigone, feel morally justified yet inchoate and disenfranchised.

With the Republican National Convention just down the street, maybe it's good that we walk out of this production with the words of demagogues ringing in our ears.