It all boils down to one conversational debate.

Antigone has defied King Creon's edict against burying the corpse of her brother. The penalty is death. Her argument is that moral law supersedes his order and her guiding light is the imperative of civil disobedience.

Creon deflates her bid with the disarming revelation that both dead brothers were scheming murderers, and his decision to honor one and defile the other was strictly a political coin flip. If Antigone keeps quiet about her behavior, he can hush things up and she can still marry the prince.

So Antigone's decision subtly shifts from "good or bad" to "life or death." It's the primary plot distinction between this 1944 version by Jean Anouilh and the original Sophocles version some 2,000 years earlier.

Anouilh also modernizes the Greek chorus by replacing it with a single character, gives a humorously amoral point of view to the head guard, and puts as many as three speaking characters in a scene.

But the ponderousness of tragic inevitability prevails. If we've forgotten our Sophocles, Anouilh's Chorus loses no time in telling us that Antigone's death is a sure thing, and Elizabeth Wolfe's performance in the title role leaves no doubt as to her final answer.

A hint of another possible outcome would give some relief.

But while director Dave Schaeffer holds the traditional tragic line, he gives set designer Andrew Doan and costumer Carlynn Wolfe plenty of free rein in the visual setting.

Since Anouilh wrote the play during the Nazi occupation of France, swastikas and storm trooper boots would be an easy connection. But for TAG's tiny stage, the designers have suggested a decontamination area by covering walls, floor, ceiling and furniture with plastic sheeting and suiting up the guards in respirator masks, coveralls and disposable booties.

Obviously, the stench from the rotting corpse has spread to the royal palace, where Robert St. John wears a lab coat and gloves to play Creon — who admits to fastidiousness and an interest in hygiene.

Other touches include a laptop and computer for the king and camera phones and hand-held computer games for the guards.

Although Wolfe and St. John bring excellent articulation, good character sense and dramatic emphasis to the central argument, that longish scene does not shore up the entire play. Adam Trecker's guard mixes humor into his innocent obtuseness, but Jenny Logico's unending choral odes are punctuated only by the annoying thumping of her staff.

Ultimately, one is left puzzling over what Anouilh and Schaeffer were trying to say with this play that warrants rewriting the original. There is a dialogue reference to "3,000 years of Antigones," and the TAG show poster is bordered with mug shots of historically significant dissenters.

But the production neither pricks at a dormant social consciousness nor issues a resounding call to arms. Antigone gives up on life, and we have only her tragic fixation to tell us why.