DAVID Stuttard, director of the York classical myth specialists Actors of Dionysus, had detected a strange phenomenon: whenever work began on a production, skies would darken and thunder roll, as if the ancient gods were looking down on the cast.

Instead of thunder, the company had been struck by a need to change the cast, and no minor change at that. Joanna Chappell arrived from faraway Brighton to take over the title role of Antigone on Friday. Quicker than a Quick Fit tyre change, she had learnt the ropes - let alone the lines - in time for last night's preview.

Then came another cause for concern: yesterday, actor Chris Patrick Nolan had to attend the accident and emergency department at York District Hospital, troubled by kidney pains. Still, the show must go on, and so did Nolan in his role as Creon's aide, a course of medicine seeing him through the performance. Brave soul.

Despite those late hitches, David Stuttard's new adaptation of Antigone, with its value-added psychological profiling, still emerged triumphant. He has transferred Sophocles's 2,500-year-old story from ancient Greece to the aftermath of a modern Balkan war, the set's centrepiece being a cracked war memorial.

Stuttard has re-written the dialogue, with updated references to posters on billboards and Thebes being strafed, yet he is as poetic as ever with his images of weeping skies and the dances of the stars. Brutality stands cheek by jowl with beauty.

Antigone is a study of the force of love, young and feisty Antigone (Chappell) being ruled by her heart in her insistence on burying her disgraced brother, against the orders of military dictator Creon (Paul Bridges), a man ruled by love of country. The law of God clashes with the law of man, out of balance with nature until the serpentine Teiresias (a serpentine Tamsin Shasha) goes to slinky work on trying to change Creon's stance.

Throughout scene changes have been conducted with speedy military precision by a cast whose sensual performance slows to a traumatic peak in the finale of the suicide of Creon's son Haemon (Andrew Callaghan). Combining reportage with the painfully beautiful music of Gorecki and balletic movement choreographed by Thea Nerissa Barnes and Lia Prentaki, AOD brings ecstasy to agony.

Antigone, Actors of Dionysus, Chapel Studio Theatre, College of Ripon and York St John, York, tonight until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly. Box office: 01904 623568.