[Ivo van Hove’s production of Antigone] has made it especially easy to pick up on the similarities between Antigone and Creon: they are both called single-minded and rigid by those around them; at the end of the play, he lies down in the spot where she died. In this light—even if it is a passing illumination—we may ask how it is that Creon is the villain and Antigone the hero. But Creon has all the power, and Antigone has none. Antigone is not a monarch whose personal law becomes everyone’s law; this is why she moves the people of Thebes, while Creon can only frighten them.

Rivka Galchen, “New Drama”