Classics Play: Medea Dr R Wyles Keep Calm and dont murder your children- watching the Medea you

begin to see why the implacable tragic heroine is incapable of following this eminently sensible advice...... The slogan on the posters advertising this years Classics play caused as much of a stir as the original production of this tragedy in Athens almost 2,500 years ago! The outrageousness of Euripides play is not simply in its presentation of a myth in which a mother kills her children to take revenge on her husband for his marital betrayal, but shockingly it actually invites the audience to see it from her point of view. Dont murder your children normally goes without saying, but in the world of Medea it becomes the urgent plea of those around the tragic heroine while her reasons for being unable to heed the advice are made inescapably clear. As though this were not enough, in the same play Euripides also addresses the issues of immigration, integration, asylum seeking, sexual inequality, inter-state politics, and marital breakdown. Medea is a big play with strikingly modern themes and the brilliance of the production of it in Founder Hall on 22nd and 23rd March 2012 was that it allowed the audience to see the play through a modern lens without compromising the hardcore grittiness of the original. Importantly the confident and mature performances of the protagonists, Lucy White as Medea and William Blanchard as Jason, rendered the marital dispute at the heart of the action entirely plausible so that even if its results were extreme, terrifyingly this all seemed within the realms of possibility. The success of the production in making this tragedy accessible to a modern audience is no mean feat given the challenge of tragic conventions the ever present chorus reflecting in songs on the action, the impossibly long speeches, the formalised law court style arguments, and the lengthy reports of off-stage action these are all undeniable oddities to anyone reared on naturalistic drama. The directors of this production, Will Burn and Ben Harrison, however, took the bull by the horns and found creative ways to tame these features and to render them dramatically effective for a modern audience. The long prologue with which the play opens was brilliantly delivered by the Nurse, Poppy Stokes, whose energy, movement, and engagement set the tone for the rest of the production. The long speeches were broken up by some nice pieces of staging: so Medea in her Women of Corinth speech went to each member of the chorus and addressed different sections of her appeal to each. Elsewhere props were used to mediate the weighty blocks of words: so Medea calmly dealt out tarot cards (a nice reference to her reputation as a sorceress) while she wondered how to murder her enemies. The chorus (Lizzie Parr, Imogen Stead, Poppy Stokes, Gina Walter, and Kat Wood), were normalised for modern tastes not singing and dancing as they would have in the original (which can so easily be unintentionally comic when attempted now) - and delivered their views about the action in well-paced and neatly delivered 1

poems. They had one of the hardest jobs in being present on stage throughout the play and they managed this admirably. There was much that was refreshing in the staging and interpretation of the tragedy in this production. Playing some of the scenes for laughs sugared the pill of its otherwise harrowing content. Thomas Camidges pvc and leather ensemble and performance as the king of Athens chasing Medea round the stage in his excitement at the prospect of finally having children was certainly an unforgettable moment (masterfully carried off by Lucy and Thomas and well supported by the attendants Jack Hudfield and Alex Kumra). The use of the Royal bugles (Max Carty and George Whittle) to announce the King Creons arrival, and Medeas eye roll in response, was an excellent touch. Similarly Matthew Pomeroys delivery of Creons line Woman, move! will, Im sure, be remembered for a long time together with his suitably deferential attendants (Ben Moore and Alex Stainsby). The bitter parody of marital bliss in the interaction between Jason and Medea was put across beautifully and gave the occasional opportunity for humour Jasons suggestion that Medea should Stay calm after she has slapped him, not only tied in very neatly with the posters for the play but also aroused a heartfelt laugh from the audience. Other choices offered new angles for interpreting the play. The decision to give the messenger speech, one of the most graphic and gruesome accounts of death in Greek tragedy, to two hooded figures (Dominic Blythe and Andrew Wright) with echoing voices added a chilling psychological aspect to the scene. The group of hooded figures, all dressed in black, bringing on a golden cloth to represent the poisoned veil which the princess would put on, offered an effective visual support to Medeas long speech and as it encircled her, showed her isolation. These same figures, Medeas spirits, too many to mention but all excellent, clinging to Jason in the final scene and holding him back from touching his dead children offered a strong visual expression of his powerlessness by the end. The poor innocents (Max Briggs-Goode and Joseph McNamara), were very good children both dead and alive, and were kept in exemplary order by their Tutor (Hari Prabu). The set, music and lighting for the performance all worked effectively to support the representation of the play world as both ancient and modern, both familiar and alien. The set drew on the ancient model with the seating curved round the stage so that the audience was closely involved and even implicated (as Jason made his first entrance from amongst them) in the action of the play. The sumptuous purple fabric of the houses facade exploited an ancient symbol for wealth but shimmered under modern stage lighting (which was expertly executed throughout). Similarly Jonathan Theurings use of modern sound technology to transform the 17th-century French music which accompanied the performance created a backdrop which was both atmospheric and a neat metaphor for the vision of the production as a whole. The Medea has so much to say to a modern audience, and yet its gritty content and dramatic conventions have the potential to prove an insurmountable challenge to staging it....not so for the cast, directors, and backstage crew of this production whose tour de force offered the audience an unforgettable and thought-provoking experience just as Euripides did all those years ago. 2