Reviews 2000
Reviews 2000
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by Euripides, translated by Robinson Jeffers, directed by Miles Potter
Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford
June 28-October 1, 2000
“Medea as Lady Sneerwell”
As I saw the majority of the sold-out house for “Medea” rise for a standing ovation, I could only reflect on why I found this production difficult to enjoy. In 1998 I saw Niketi Kontouri’s production of this play with Karyofyllia Karabeti as Medea for the National Theatre of Greece when it came to Toronto. Earlier this year I saw Helen Schlesinger as Clytaemestra in Katie Mitchell’s production of the “Oresteia” for the Royal National Theatre during the du Maurier World Stage Festival. And just the previous week I had seen Pamela Rabe as Orinthia in Shaw’s “The Apple Cart” at the Shaw Festival. Though I have previously enjoyed many of her performances, Seana McKenna simply did not have the power and range of the three actresses mentioned necessary to convince me that she is the sorceress Medea, grand-daughter of Helios, god of the sun. Pamela Rabe, playing the king’s mistress in Shaw’s very unmythological political satire, did more in only one scene to convince me that she (though human) was a goddess worthy to be adored than did McKenna in the whole of “Medea”.
Part of the problem is the use of Robinson Jeffers’ 1947 adaptation of Euripides’ play. Jeffers seeks to make the play more human by removing almost all of the mythological references in the original. As a result the focus is skewed toward the conflict between Jason and Medea and takes on an undesirable misogynist cast. In reality, Medea is the most powerful character in the play, able to make the moon do her bidding, as we hear. So why, then is she even trifling with the mere mortals around her? The reason is that the true conflict in the play is within Medea herself--between the human and the superhuman. Euripides is known as the first dramatist to be interested in human psychology and here he has relocated one of the prime conflicts in Greek drama within a single person. Even if one is using Jeffers’ adaptation, this focus must be taken into account or much of the play makes little sense. How can Medea make her final appearance in a fiery chariot drawn by dragons or, as in this production, change herself into a bird, if she does not from the start possess powers beyond those of everyone else in the play? Besides the four deaths she causes, the play is the tragedy of Medea’s relinquishing of her humanity for the sake of her revenge.
Using Jeffers’ adaptation could still work if McKenna or the director, her husband Miles Potter, had a clear insight into the work. Unfortunately, Potter seems to have been most concerned with telling the story in a straightforward way while providing little or no interpretation of it. He allows an intermission, which is fatal to the steady build-up of tension in Greek drama. The play is only an hour and 45 minutes without intermission--as long and many first sections of plays by Shakespeare. Why dissipate the energy halfway through? Potter also allows McKenna to indulge in types of line delivery that vitiate any sense of her character’s terrible power. In fact, through the entire first half of the play and most of the second, McKenna plays Medea alternately as if she were Lady Macbeth or, worse, Lady Sneerwell from “The School for Scandal” (both of which she has played at Stratford). Most of her interactions with characters like Aegeus or Jason are in the ironic, funny-voiced “Sneerwell” mode. While this does provoke much laughter and makes Medea and Jason seem like precursors of Beatrice and Benedick, I could not help but wonder how Potter or McKenna could think this appropriate to a Greek tragedy. Only in the final scene when she displays the bodies of her slain children to Jason, does McKenna approach the horrible grandeur of her character that Karabeti, Schlesinger and Rabe had shown in theirs from the very start.
As Jason, Scott Wentworth is very good at showing the callousness of his character, completely unaware of how his misogyny, opportunism and Hellenocentrism could offend his foreign wife. As Medea’s nurse, Rita Howell marks her return to the Stratford festival after an absence of 38 years. I did not find her especially effective in the first part of the play, but she rises magnificently to the challenge of great speech describing the deaths of Creusa, Jason’s new wife, and Creon, her father. Only at this point late in the action did I become engaged with the play.
Of the secondary characters, Bernard Hopkins and Robert Benson are excellent as the Tutor and Creon respectively, Benson making Creon’s giving into Medea’s request despite his better judgment seem quite believable. John Dolan as Aegeus (mispronounced by everyone throughout the play) delivers his usual bluster; luckily it happens to suit his character this time. The chorus of Corinthian women is played by Patricia Collins, Kate Trotter and Michelle Giroux, seemingly representing the three ages of woman--the matron, the young woman and the girl. Collins and Trotter display excellent command of the verse and the mood, making one wish Jeffers had not curtailed their role. Giroux should learn a facial expression of horror different from those she uses in comedy.
Peter Hartwell, in his first engagement with Stratford, designed attractive costumes that set the scene in Greece while cleverly not placing it in any specific period. He gives McKenna a huge kimono-like robe and big temptress wig to make her seem more imposing. It is not clear why her dwelling looks like the filled-in balcony of the Festival stage. Scott Henderson’s lighting is generally fine but perhaps too given to special effects. Worse could be said for Michael Becker, the sound designer and composer of music. His idea of grand ceremonial music sounded far too much like something from an old Hollywood sword-and-sandals epic. As is usual at Stratford, music was used far too often to underscore the words. In general, the costume, lighting and sound seemed like attempts to supply the magic and mystery that should have been seen in the acting. While the soundscape of ocean waves that opens the show augured well, Becker’s synthesizer sound effect for Medea’s transformation into a bird came straight from a Sunday morning kiddie cartoon and utterly spoiled its impact.
This is not the worst production of a Greek tragedy that Stratford has attempted recently (think of David William’s “Bacchae” in 1993) but it is far from the best (think of Douglas Campbell’s recreation of Guthrie’s “Oedipus” in 1997). Merely telling the story is not enough. Rather both director and lead actor have to communicate a consistent interpretation of the story. In this “Medea” they did not.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: Scott Wentworth and Seana McKenna. ©2000 Stratford Festival.
2000-09-07
Medea