MYTH, MOTHER, MONSTER

One of the joys of teaching Classics is the opportunity to go ‘off lesson plan’ and retell the great stories of the ancient world: Oedipus - killer of his father, husband to his mother, brother to his own children; Agamemnon who sacrificed his own daughter to retain his authority over the Greeks; his wife Clytemnestra who retaliated by killing Agamemnon; their son Orestes who avenged his father’s death - by murdering his mother. (Now there are two family Christmases I shouldn’t wish to share….) Glorious stuff, if somewhat blood-curdling.

in order to slow her father’s pursuit. Later she persuades the daughters of King Pelias to dissect their own father and boil him up – allegedly, a recipe for eternal youth. (It didn’t work and don’t try this at home.) This granddaughter of the Sun may possess enviable magical powers, but she is also a woman who will do whatever it takes to get what she needs. The ends justify the means. Jason really should have known….

And then, as the family – newly expanded with the arrival of their sonsstruggle on in exile, a new opportunity presents itself to Jason: marriage with the beautiful young princess of Corinth, with the prospect not only of a more conventional form of domestic bliss but also in due course the throne of Corinth. And he can’t resist, even though it means abandoning Medea and the boys. He really should have known….

The legend of Medea is a favourite. Having helped Jason (of Argonaut fame) to steal the Golden Fleece (and for those of us of a certain age, remember the Ray Harryhausen models?), the princess of Colchis abandons her home and family for a life of exile with the man she loves. It is not an easy path she has chosen and she has to resort to some pretty extreme measures to ensure their safety. She cuts up her own brother and throws his body parts into the sea,

By the end of the play Jason’s bride has been scorched to death by a poisoned robe – a wedding gift from You Know Who. Her father’s attempts to embrace his dying daughter have led him to the same fate. Justice for these two? Perhaps. But what of Jason himself? Most horrifically, his own punishment is the murder of his sons – at the hands of their mother. Medea flies off to a new life, and a new man, in Athens. The hero Jason is left utterly broken.

But this gives us with more than an entertaining story of poor male decision-making and ruthless female vengeance to fill the last five minutes before Break. In the hands of Athenian playwright Euripides ‘Medea’ became one of the great classical dramas and still today it provides one of the great female roles in the theatre. So how on earth could a school production – a cast of teenagers, for goodness sake – pull off a play with such dark and adult themes? After all, it took the National Theatre and the likes of the late great Helen McCory and Michaela Coel to present this latest retelling of the story by Ben Powers. And I have seen enough execrable productions of classical tragedies – student and professional – over the years to understand just how hard a challenge it is to make this type of drama live for a modern audience.

Classical plays are relatively short. (After all, they were originally performed in trilogies, the ancient appetite for drama being rather voracious than that of the modern age.) The poetry is rich but the words themselves are spare, especially in Ben Power’s skilful hands. Each carefully-weighted line therefore demands intelligent delivery. Every member of the ‘Medea’ cast spoke their parts with genuine confidence, conviction and vocal clarity: they understood and believed in what they were saying, and therefore so did we; and for those of us in the audience who are old-timers, we could hear every word.

Another challenge for the modern director is what on earth to do with the Chorus. Frankly, the ancient Greek approach – complex poetry, singing, dancing, and a lack of individual character – just does not work for a modern audience. Messers CooperRichards and Whitfield, however, adopted a stylish solution to this problem. Dressed in suitably classical drapery of uniform green, this Chorus had a graceful physical presence, their movements carefully choreographed, making full use of the levels and space afforded by the set. More importantly, they provided a mirror to our own responses, a moral compass for the action - their initial sympathy for the abandoned Medea ultimately replaced with horror and revulsion.

The stunning design adopted clean, restrained lines – an elegance which suggested the luxury of a royal palace but kept the focus firmly on the human tragedy unfolding in front of it. Equally powerful was the subdued lighting, which created a genuine sense of lurking menace, and a soundscape which kept the nerves jangling.

There were a great many victims in this tale – Kreon (Peter W), Kreusa (Sophie S), and, of course, the children, affectingly portrayed by Jack P and Lawrence R. But at its centre – and crucial to the production’s success - lay a powerful trio. Esther A-A brought dignity and depth to the role of the Nurse, providing a stillness and a humanity at the core of the play. Shaan S had what is in many ways an impossible job: to make this selfish, career-prioritising, wife-betraying, children-abandoning man seem plausible – and he achieved that. His Jason had certainly convinced himself that he was doing The Right Thing, and, an authoritative presence on stage, Shaan had us convinced too –as he did later when this early selfrighteousness was overwhelmed by agony and despair.

But so much of the success of the play depends on Medea herself. We the audience must believe in her vulnerability as a foreigner abandoned in a strange land, a woman in a world where men hold all the cards, unable to return home to her family. We must cheer on her manipulation of the foolish men around her blinded by their own smugness. And then we must at least try to understand how she is able to kill her own children to get back at her errant husband – even if we fail (and we probably should).

In this classic role Ali H ‘s performance was stellar and strikingly mature, as she switched nimbly from victim to victor, from seering honesty to fawning pretence and back again, from the agony of a mother who knows she is about to lose her children to the triumphalism of a woman who has dealt her worst enemy a body blow. In the latter scenes she displayed a visceral rawness that was totally compelling and the moment when she staggered from the palace, as if from the gates of Hell, dragging the bloody body bags containing her sons, was utterly chilling. We left the 400 Hall lost in thought, stunned by what we had witnessed (in all sorts of senses), and with the Chorus’ closing words ringing in our ears: “First silence. Then darkness.”

Extraordinarily, when ‘Medea’ premiered in the City Dionysia tragedy competition of 431 BCE, Euripides didn’t win first prize. In fact, he came last. Was the story simply too much for the Athenian audience to stomach? What on earth was the winning play like? (It hasn’t survived so we shall never know.) There were, however, no such misjudgements when it came to this version. This was simply a remarkable production; from the directors’ vision to some outstanding, NT-worthy performances, Repton’s ‘Medea’ was a highpoint of school drama – no, a high point of drama. Perhaps Euripides just had the wrong company.

I SEE NOW WHAT I MUST DO. THERE ARE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE AVOIDED.

SABT

FEEL MY REVENGE ROARING.