On the 15 of November I saw media at the Rose theatre in Kingston. The David Stuttard adaption of Euripides play was directed by Abigail Anderson and performed by the actors of Dionysus.Set in Ancient Greece, a woman by the name of Medea has been left by her husband to marry the princess of the city they live in Corinth. King Creon knows of Medeas maniacal schemes so he banishes her. With one day more in Corinth she plans to get revenge on those who betrayed her, the princess Glauce, Creon, and her husband Jason. This particular adaption is unique because they use a lot of arial work throughout which proposes many different and new ideas to this historical tragedy.
Let's start with the arial work, this play was originally produced in 431BC and has been performed countless times since, leading me to believe all that could be said about Medea had already been said, however incorporating the Arial work into it brought a new breath of imagination to the play and allowed the audience to see it from a new perspective. There was a seen were Medea and Jason were arguing over his betrayal, during this seen the two actors were attached by a rope which was looped through some scaffolding making the actors counterbalances, during the scene the actors pulled up and down on the rope throwing the other up and down, whilst watching this I realised that the rope was representing there relationship and how these two struggled for power over the other, which I had not seen in previous adaptions. Another point is how in one of Medea's monologues she was running up and down the large red wall behind her, this effect was made by having the actor who plays Creon run up and down a ladder whilst being attached to Medea by rope in the scaffolding, if the rope does represent the relationships in the piece then this shows that no matter how scary, crazy or evil Medea's seems to be she is only capable of doing these Exorcist like movements because the people of Corinth, represented in Creon there king, aid her into the abyss of madness.
Secondly I would like to mention the fantastically designed sounds of this production, instrumental and vocal. All five actors contributed to a splendid vocal performance were they sang some sought of Hymn in Greek, despite not knowing the words they were saying I still knew the atmosphere was full of tension and foreboding, which fits perfectly with the events of the play. The score of this performance does its job perfectly, to help get across to the audience what to feel at which time, an example of this is in one of the more stylised sequences were some of the actors were banging on the large wall one after another whilst this was happening the speakers around the theatre made a harsh drumming sound in time with the performance, this initially made me jump and then eventually caused a small and instinctive sense of paranoia, as a audience member this made me more immersed in the story and there for made me enjoy it much more.
Thirdly I would like to mention the use of the colour red throughout the play. The colour red has many connotations that relate to the themes in Medea, examples are romance, danger, blood etc, and this would explain the amount of different times it was used. The ropes used in the arial work were red, this makes sense because it refers to risk they take when performing these move and tricks, which can also relate to my point about the arial work and how it represents the risky business Medea's causes. Another example of red is the large wall at the back of the stage which Medea crawls out of at the beginning, throughout the play Medea Is referred to as demon or a victim of possession, I believe that the wall could represent the plains of hell that this sick mind comes from, this is good because it indicated more towards the mythical and abstract side to the play than most previous adaptions have. In this production the only colours used were Black, White & mainly Red, I believe that this shows how Medea has been outcast from the rest of Corinth. The character Medea is almost synonymous with the colour red because they are both attached to these concepts of romance and danger, were as the rest of Corinth fade into the normality of Black and White.
Finally I would like to talk about Tamsin Shasha's Interpretation of the character Medea. In this interpretation of Medea the character hinted more towards her mythical heritage, more of a magical monster than an average woman, I felt this because of the first sequence in the piece were all the cast had Medea tied to them and was pulling her around as she tried to escape, it was as if a monster was being trapped, the effect showing this scene to the audience at the beginning was surprising enough to immediately get them excited about what is to come, also it hinted to what sought of sequences were coming up. Despite the more demonic side to Medea in the arial sequences, she showed a more grounded interpretation of Medea in dialogue, I did not like this because it would have caused the audience confusion as to who or what she was, however it is not the most important part of piece so it didn't detract from the main performance at all.
In conclusion I thoroughly enjoyed this production of Medea, the arial work helps show a more stylised version of the classic, the sound design helps support the main performance, the colour red hints towards the characters mythical heritage, and the actress of Medea showed both sides to this interesting character. I would recommend this play to any one looking for a surprise.
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