Theater Review: A Chilling Updated Medea

Medea

Written by Simon Stone (after Euripides)

Directed by Simon Stone

Starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale

Brooklyn Academy of Music

January 27, 2020

Like most plays written in classical Athens, Medea is based on ancient legends that had been kicking around the Mediterranean for centuries. I mostly remember it as about a woman who kills her children, but the ancient sources are surprisingly variable about even this key plot point. What is agreed upon is that, on the way home to Greece, the adventurer Jason marries Medea, daughter of the sun god Helios, bears 2-3 children with her, then dumps her in favor of the daughter of king Croesus on arriving home in Corinth. At this point the legends vary wildly. In Euripides’ classic play, she then becomes an embittered, abandoned wife, and exerts revenge on Jason by killing his children, with the play ending with her in triumph, riding above the stage in Helios’ chariot. Other versions have her children being killed by townspeople, or killed by Medea unintentioinally. The various legends have her then wander around Greece killing other men. The point of all this was a bit vague, other than “don’t mess around with unhinged daughters of the gods”. Euripides’ version added a clear Athenian humanistic aspect by focusing the drama on a distraught, wronged woman who then commits a heinous crime. Built into all these versions is a clear dichotomy. Medea acts as a thinking woman and is wronged (building the audience’s sympathy) but is also a “barbarian” from outside Athens, making her unsympathetic to the Athenians.

Australian film director and actor Simon Stone (above) is making his name with innovative staged versions of dramas like Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, Chekhov's Three Sisters, and Lorca’s Yerma, which I enjoyed in New York last year. In his Medea, just as in Yerma, we see the decline and madness (perhaps) of a distraught woman, updated to modern times. In both plays, Stone places his actors up front, brightly lit, and with little costuming or artifice to shield us from the raw human emotions on display. In Yerma this was done by having the actors perform in a clear-walled cage, surrounded by audience. In Medea, the actors performed in front of a blazingly white abstract backdrop, without fixed props, shadows or spot lighting to distract us. (Unfortunately, the geometric set partially obstructed the view of audience members at the sides, like me). Stone coaches a visceral, naked acting style from his troupe, here amplified by the now-familiar use of close-up video favored by Ivo van Hove and other directors of our era; in this Medea, the children sometimes film their parents, including one time in flagrante delicto.

Stone does not literally follow Euripides’ version, but does follow him in spirit. As in Euripides, we are both horrified by and sympathetic with Medea. It would not work nowadays to make us unsympathetic because she is an outsider (unless we wanted to create a drama critical of anti-immigrant populists), so instead Stone makes Anna (the revised Medea character) mentally ill, having previously tried to poison her husband. The first part of the play gives us lots of video close ups of the creepy and excellent Rose Byrne, and her residual mental illness is disturbing. Of course we should not feel disturbed or aversive towards the mentally ill, but we often do, and Stone’s idea of using this to make us unsympathetic worked well. But like Euripides, Stone also asks us to sympathize with Anna, since her philandering husband now wants to leave her and the kids. Instead of taking up with the daughter of a king, Lucas/Jason (Bobby Cannavale) is dumping Anna for the daughter of his boss, the head of a big pharma company (CEOs are the new kings). In another nice touch, Stone has Anna use her knowledge as a pharmacology researcher to use poison for her murders, nicely tying into the ancient legends of Medea as a witch and sorceress making potions. Finally, rather than riding triumphantly in a sun-chariot at the end as Medea did, Anna joins her children in death by poisoning herself, consistent with Stone’s picture of a mentally ill woman.  I loved the modernized adaptation right up until the ending. There, the raw, uncompromising drama was undercut by Stone using third person narration to tell us what happened, as Anna poisons herself and her kids, then burns down the house. I think here Stone was trying to evoke a narrative Greek chorus ending, but it only diffused the tension and rather spoiled the ending for me.

The cast was excellent. Rose Byrne (X men, Troy, The Turning) was raw, chilling, and sympathetic as Anna. Bobby Cannavale (The Hairy Ape, Blue Jasmine) was equally complex—half brutal self-serving guy, half tortured, guilty philandering husband, with a nice mix of raw sexuality and sniveling indecision. Stone directed with rapid pacing and a great sense of inevitability, just as a tragedy should. There was only that big misstep at the ending. This Medea was a wonderful model for how Greek drama can be made relevant and provocative for a modern audience, and I look forward to seeing more of Stone’s work.