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osprey_archerI’m afraid you’re going to get a prologue about My History with this Play about every single National Theater play that I review. Sorry, but not sorry enough to restrain myself!
With Medea this history is at least fairly short: two years ago in Zoom theater, we did the translation by Michael Collier & Georgia Machemer, and it knocked my socks off to such an extent that ever since I’ve been seeking out not only Medeas but also any and all Greek tragedies. I saw Oedipus at the Indiana Repertory theater! I’ve faithfully voted for Greek tragedies in every Zoom theater poll, and we did indeed do Bakkhai! (More commonly spelled Bacchae, and I was sorry to see this one isn’t on National Theater, because I’d love a chance to see it. National Theater does have Antigone though, which I haven’t seen since the fourth grade class across the hall put it on, which knocked my socks off too come to think of it…)
Most of all, however, I’ve been seeking out Medeas. Pasolini’s film version also blew my tiny mind, in a different way than the play - it retells not just the play but the whole Medea story, starring Maria Callas the famous opera singer, who does not sing here but remains a mesmerizing presence throughout with her large dark always-watchful eyes.
It’s also a movie with a thesis statement, not merely telling a story but making an argument, which I intended to post about at more length back when I saw the movie… and then did not, and now I can’t remember the details, a meditation on the place of myth in human life, the eruption of violence from beneath the veneer of rationality, the culture clash of Medea the high priestess from a land where the king in his death time is sacrificed to bring fertility to the fields with her new home in ancient Corinth.
I also saw a college performance of Medea last spring, about which one might kindly say that the actors were giving it their all. And it had some interesting staging: when Euripides has something recounted secondhand because it happened off-stage, or before the play began, etc., the actors enacted it behind a screen so you saw it in shadow as the story was recounted. Very effective, especially for the bit where Medea kills her children.
And at last we come to the National Theater Medea, starring Helen McCrory as a powerhouse Medea: ranting, furious with Jason for leaving her for the princess of Corinth, possibly just a little bit unhinged. But she’s still hinged enough to play nice when King Creon comes to tell her that she has been exiled. “Why?” she demands, and the king tells her, “Because I fear you.”
Everyone in this play fears Medea, but no one fears her enough. When Medea begs on her knees for one more night in Corinth, the king grants her request. Then he leaves, and she stands up with a glitter in his eyes: this will give her enough time to enact her revenge
You can sort of understand it for King Creon’s impulse toward mercy here, as he’s never seen her in action, but Medea’s ex-husband Jason who saw Medea cut her own brother into pieces surely ought to know better. Clearly, however, he does not. He’s all, Babe, I abandoned you to marry the hot young princess… but listen, I did it for US! Because this will make our sons the relatives of royalty, thus ensuring their advancement in life!
(Awkwardly, at this point these sons have been banished with Medea, which means they may well starve to death by the roadside, but no matter.)
And when Medea pretends that she’s finally seen the wisdom of his plan, the chump actually falls for it. He lets their sons deliver a wedding present right to his new bride. It’s a beautiful robe, imbued with poison, which burns up the girl and then her father the king when he embraces his dead only child.
I didn’t like the translation by Ben Power as much as the Collier & Machemer we used in Zoom theater - it didn’t seem as graceful to me, and there are times when it seemed too modernized (like the bit where Medea laments that women give up their “agency” to their husbands). And as usual when a production is set in modern times, I felt that it would have been more interesting in its original setting, really engaging with the alienness of that setting as Pasolini’s production did.
(I think modern adaptations are often an attempt to highlight what is universal in a story, but unless you go full Clueless, often they end up drawing attention to the parts that are in fact historically specific. Surely in modern times, someone from Medea’s homeland would be trying to get her extradited to be tried for stealing the Golden Fleece and murdering her brother, for instance.)
And I’m not entirely sure where I stand on the chorus, all dressed up in flowered dresses like the world’s creepiest 1950s housewives, dancing in a manner that suggests someone gave them the stage direction “Dance like a broken automaton who keeps getting subjected to electric shocks.” On the one hand, it’s very effectively creepy! On the other hand, they felt pitying rather than sympathetic to Medea’s plight, which may be a reflection of the translation as much as anything else, but I think it weakens the play.
All that said - what amazing performances all around! The children were excellent: they don’t speak, but they spend a lot of time on stage, and you begin to hope against hope that they won’t meet their inevitable deaths. (They do, of course, as always happens in tragedies.) King Creon brought an excellent gravitas to his role, sternness mixed with that kingly magnanimity that proves his undoing. I preferred our Zoom theater Jason (a smarmy slimeball), but one suspects that Jason would see himself in this production’s Jason, who seems to genuinely believe his protestations that ditching Medea was all part of a wise and noble plan to advance the whole family!
And Medea of course is the standout, heartbroken, furious, the epitome of “cutting off your nose to spite your face,” acting sweet and docile if it will get her what she wants but boiling with rage underneath - yet still with a genuine softness toward her children, which makes it all the more terrifying when she works herself up to the point of killing them. The impact is all the more painful because she does love them and it does not stop her.
And then she carries children off in sleeping bags (presumably so she could carry weighted sleeping bags rather than the actual children). The entire final scene, her whole last confrontation with Jason, she’s got these sleeping bags, she hauls them in along the ground and then hoists them up on her shoulders, and they’re heavy, and at last she’s alone onstage and turns her back on us and staggers off on the road to Athens, bent under the weight of the dead children slung across her shoulders…
It’s so effective that I can’t even complain about the fact that ONCE AGAIN Medea doesn’t get her big exit in a chariot pulled by dragons. I’ve never seen a production go full dragon chariot. PLEASE, I’m dying here, if the ancient Greeks could rig up a chariot pulled by dragons for Euripides, then surely a modern theatrical company could manage it!
With Medea this history is at least fairly short: two years ago in Zoom theater, we did the translation by Michael Collier & Georgia Machemer, and it knocked my socks off to such an extent that ever since I’ve been seeking out not only Medeas but also any and all Greek tragedies. I saw Oedipus at the Indiana Repertory theater! I’ve faithfully voted for Greek tragedies in every Zoom theater poll, and we did indeed do Bakkhai! (More commonly spelled Bacchae, and I was sorry to see this one isn’t on National Theater, because I’d love a chance to see it. National Theater does have Antigone though, which I haven’t seen since the fourth grade class across the hall put it on, which knocked my socks off too come to think of it…)
Most of all, however, I’ve been seeking out Medeas. Pasolini’s film version also blew my tiny mind, in a different way than the play - it retells not just the play but the whole Medea story, starring Maria Callas the famous opera singer, who does not sing here but remains a mesmerizing presence throughout with her large dark always-watchful eyes.
It’s also a movie with a thesis statement, not merely telling a story but making an argument, which I intended to post about at more length back when I saw the movie… and then did not, and now I can’t remember the details, a meditation on the place of myth in human life, the eruption of violence from beneath the veneer of rationality, the culture clash of Medea the high priestess from a land where the king in his death time is sacrificed to bring fertility to the fields with her new home in ancient Corinth.
I also saw a college performance of Medea last spring, about which one might kindly say that the actors were giving it their all. And it had some interesting staging: when Euripides has something recounted secondhand because it happened off-stage, or before the play began, etc., the actors enacted it behind a screen so you saw it in shadow as the story was recounted. Very effective, especially for the bit where Medea kills her children.
And at last we come to the National Theater Medea, starring Helen McCrory as a powerhouse Medea: ranting, furious with Jason for leaving her for the princess of Corinth, possibly just a little bit unhinged. But she’s still hinged enough to play nice when King Creon comes to tell her that she has been exiled. “Why?” she demands, and the king tells her, “Because I fear you.”
Everyone in this play fears Medea, but no one fears her enough. When Medea begs on her knees for one more night in Corinth, the king grants her request. Then he leaves, and she stands up with a glitter in his eyes: this will give her enough time to enact her revenge
You can sort of understand it for King Creon’s impulse toward mercy here, as he’s never seen her in action, but Medea’s ex-husband Jason who saw Medea cut her own brother into pieces surely ought to know better. Clearly, however, he does not. He’s all, Babe, I abandoned you to marry the hot young princess… but listen, I did it for US! Because this will make our sons the relatives of royalty, thus ensuring their advancement in life!
(Awkwardly, at this point these sons have been banished with Medea, which means they may well starve to death by the roadside, but no matter.)
And when Medea pretends that she’s finally seen the wisdom of his plan, the chump actually falls for it. He lets their sons deliver a wedding present right to his new bride. It’s a beautiful robe, imbued with poison, which burns up the girl and then her father the king when he embraces his dead only child.
I didn’t like the translation by Ben Power as much as the Collier & Machemer we used in Zoom theater - it didn’t seem as graceful to me, and there are times when it seemed too modernized (like the bit where Medea laments that women give up their “agency” to their husbands). And as usual when a production is set in modern times, I felt that it would have been more interesting in its original setting, really engaging with the alienness of that setting as Pasolini’s production did.
(I think modern adaptations are often an attempt to highlight what is universal in a story, but unless you go full Clueless, often they end up drawing attention to the parts that are in fact historically specific. Surely in modern times, someone from Medea’s homeland would be trying to get her extradited to be tried for stealing the Golden Fleece and murdering her brother, for instance.)
And I’m not entirely sure where I stand on the chorus, all dressed up in flowered dresses like the world’s creepiest 1950s housewives, dancing in a manner that suggests someone gave them the stage direction “Dance like a broken automaton who keeps getting subjected to electric shocks.” On the one hand, it’s very effectively creepy! On the other hand, they felt pitying rather than sympathetic to Medea’s plight, which may be a reflection of the translation as much as anything else, but I think it weakens the play.
All that said - what amazing performances all around! The children were excellent: they don’t speak, but they spend a lot of time on stage, and you begin to hope against hope that they won’t meet their inevitable deaths. (They do, of course, as always happens in tragedies.) King Creon brought an excellent gravitas to his role, sternness mixed with that kingly magnanimity that proves his undoing. I preferred our Zoom theater Jason (a smarmy slimeball), but one suspects that Jason would see himself in this production’s Jason, who seems to genuinely believe his protestations that ditching Medea was all part of a wise and noble plan to advance the whole family!
And Medea of course is the standout, heartbroken, furious, the epitome of “cutting off your nose to spite your face,” acting sweet and docile if it will get her what she wants but boiling with rage underneath - yet still with a genuine softness toward her children, which makes it all the more terrifying when she works herself up to the point of killing them. The impact is all the more painful because she does love them and it does not stop her.
And then she carries children off in sleeping bags (presumably so she could carry weighted sleeping bags rather than the actual children). The entire final scene, her whole last confrontation with Jason, she’s got these sleeping bags, she hauls them in along the ground and then hoists them up on her shoulders, and they’re heavy, and at last she’s alone onstage and turns her back on us and staggers off on the road to Athens, bent under the weight of the dead children slung across her shoulders…
It’s so effective that I can’t even complain about the fact that ONCE AGAIN Medea doesn’t get her big exit in a chariot pulled by dragons. I’ve never seen a production go full dragon chariot. PLEASE, I’m dying here, if the ancient Greeks could rig up a chariot pulled by dragons for Euripides, then surely a modern theatrical company could manage it!
no subject
Date: 2024-12-20 02:46 pm (UTC)2. GOD what a good role for Helen McCrory.
3. I also have Antigone on my to-watch list. (At least 30% because I love that there are two Doctors Who - Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker - in the same play, playing an uncle and niece.)
4. Have you heard of Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon? (Here.) It's Medea-adjacent and I just started reading it and I love it.
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Date: 2024-12-20 03:07 pm (UTC)My Antigone plans have been delayed by a sudden urge to watch Antony and Cleopatra, but my winter break starts tomorrow, so there should be plenty of time for play-watching! Although Antony and Cleopatra is three hours long (!) so it may take some time to get through.
I had not heard of Glorious Exploits! Will look forward to your review.
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Date: 2024-12-21 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-20 03:47 pm (UTC)he impact is all the more painful because she does love them and it does not stop her. --That's what I'm talking about. Whoa.
Everyone in this play fears Medea, but no one fears her enough. --This strikes me as very modern-day relevant.
Babe, I abandoned you to marry the hot young princess… but listen, I did it for US! --Honestly, the number of people who make this type of argument, not just in personal relationships but in all aspects of life, is breathtaking. "I did [self-interested thing] for US." The people saying it sometimes maybe believe it! But if you're listening to it, the self-interested part can be so odious, you just can't even.
I wonder how the ancient Greeks did do the dragons. Maybe like dragons in dragon festivals in Asia, lots of people in costume?
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Date: 2024-12-20 08:43 pm (UTC)Does the relevance strike you re: Trump or climate change or some other modern day catastrophe that we fear but not enough?
Yes, it's AMAZING how people can justify their most selfish actions as being actually, if you really think about, totally selfless actually. I'M selfish to ditch you and marry a hot young princess? Well have you considered that maybe YOU'RE selfish to be MAD at me for ditching you to marry a hot young princess. >:(
I bet there are a ton of dragon chariot theories in books about ancient Greek theater. Will report back if and when I ever read one!
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Date: 2024-12-20 08:54 pm (UTC)I think I was thinking about Trump re: the relevance. Climate change I feel like divides into people fearing it appropriately and people totally not fearing it--which *I guess* is a version of not fearing it enough, but feels different.
The asterisks in first line were for something I was going to say about Medea doing the thing so we don't have to that I then thought better of... but then I forgot to take out the asterisks....
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Date: 2024-12-20 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-20 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-20 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-20 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-21 07:38 pm (UTC)I JUST WATCHED IT AND IT WAS SO GOOD??? Will post an actual review soonish.
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Date: 2024-12-22 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-22 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-23 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-20 09:12 pm (UTC)I also had one of the most terrifying(ish) theatre experiences of my life watching Medea Redux in Neil LaBute’s Bash - it’s a tiny theatre, I sat in the front row with some other people and they all bolted for the rows behind when the lights went out, so Medea delivered her entire monologue staring at me from about two metres away. I had no idea what to do with my face D:
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Date: 2024-12-20 09:30 pm (UTC)Being monologued at by Medea would be TERRIFYING.
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Date: 2024-12-21 12:51 am (UTC)I am still traumatised by the monologue :D
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Date: 2024-12-21 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-21 10:41 am (UTC)I don't know if you saw this on Bluesky, I reposted this a few days ago: Yukio Ninagawa’s 1984 performance of Medea in Japanese. I haven't watched it but apparently it's amazing.
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Date: 2024-12-22 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-21 03:24 pm (UTC)Also, if you aren't already aware of it, I'm similarly a long-time fan of Vienna Teng's song "My Medea" (which is perhaps less a strict retelling, and more just something that takes a lot of inspiration from the original tale?--still delightfully dark and haunting, though).
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Date: 2024-12-22 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-22 10:11 pm (UTC)Mmm, that's unfortunate. When I saw Medea last year - different translation I think, and not set in modern times - they hid the chorus in the audience. It made for a great gasp! moment, as well as really emphasising their role as audience surrogates, when the first actress spoke out of the audience (and then came on stage), followed by two more.
The impact is all the more painful because she does love them and it does not stop her.
Yes!!!
The entire final scene, her whole last confrontation with Jason, she’s got these sleeping bags, she hauls them in along the ground and then hoists them up on her shoulders, and they’re heavy, and at last she’s alone onstage and turns her back on us and staggers off on the road to Athens, bent under the weight of the dead children slung across her shoulders…
OMG. Amazing and painful. But yeah, mine didn't give her a full dragon chariot! TBF performing in the round, I'm not sure how they'd have managed it, but they did give her a grand exit.
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Date: 2024-12-23 12:15 am (UTC)No one gives Medea her full dragon chariot. Justice for Medea! Let her have her dragon chariot!