Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English
from c.1970 to the Present  

Project Publications
(including Archived Conference papers)

A Democratic Turn

2009 Democratic Turn Eseminar

1998-2008 Archived topics

Medea

A Review by Professor Lorna Hardwick

(For other reviews of Medea please see database no. 2587)

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Chorus: Three women, one with baby. Some speaking in unison, some individual. Some lines sung in Greek, especially crucial lines (e.g. ‘sacred rivers flow uphill’). Some heavy breathing/hissing to represent ritual aspects. Chorus entered through the audience.

Set: The play was set on Jason’s wedding day (the audience were given confetti with their programmes). The stage was dominated by a tent like structure at the side of which a wooden rib represented the entrance of the house. At the rear of the stage hung a modern painting depicting a man and a woman (a work in similar style, Bernard Safran's 'Medea' showing a woman and two boys, was reproduced on the front of the programme.) At rear stage left was a grey-blue ‘stone’ column. Wooden steps in front of the house were offset by wooden seats (front stage right) and a stone mooring post and bench (front-stage left). At the centre front of the stage was an open picture book.

Lighting: The lighting design enabled the ‘house’ to be viewed internally, revealing Medea’s desolation; the children being put to bed with the nightlight in the bedroom becoming a kaleidoscope of moving images; the children being murdered.

At the end of the play the ‘house’ collapsed revealing a black bed containing Medea and the dead children. This served as the dragon chariot. Helios was represented by brilliant lighting.

Children were represented by life size puppets wearing white shirts and brown trousers. Their faces resembled the silent masks used for children in the Oedipus plays. The use of puppets emphasised the ways in which the children were manipulated in the play.

Costume: Chorus wore rust red, two in dresses, one in trousers. The tutor wore braces with his trousers, spectacles and a round eastern European hat.

The Nurse wore a three-quarter length skirt, shawl and headscarf with boots, like a fisherwoman. Jason wore formal wedding clothes. He removed his tail-coat at the crises. Creon wore formal wedding clothes with floral buttonhole. Medea wore a black cocktail dress with pearl necklace. Aegeus wore a cream safari suit and hat with open-necked blue shirt. The Messenger (female) wore a light cotton dress.

Sound: The soundscape was a major feature, beginning with sounds of waves on the shore, a long prologue to the Nurse's prologue! The wedding and then the death of the princess and Creon were signalled by Church bells. A high-pitched electronic whistle recurred at ominous moments.

Performance reviewed : 28th April 2001, Courtyard Theatre, Hereford, England.

This was a thoughtful and powerful production. Almost any modern setting risks losing one of the threads of the Euripides. Here, Medea's power and anguish were conveyed but the elements of foreignness and sorcery were only hinted at until she flourished the elaborate dress for Glauke. The balance between stillness and physical movement was exploited to convey the traces of physical passion still underlying the physical violence between Medea and Jason. The deus ex machina was adapted so that it was Jason who was left huddled in the 'chariot' while Medea left the stage still carrying the children's bodies.

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