Reviews 2002
Reviews 2002
✭✭✭✩✩
by Euripides, adapted by Liz Lochhhead, directed by Graham McLaren
Theatre Babel, Premiere Dance Theatre, Toronto
April 8-13, 2002
"Hello Bride-Bye Bye Bairns"
The second offering at this first-ever World Stage Preview is "Medea" by the innovative classical company Theatre Babel from Glasgow. Any preconceptions about this play or about how classical Greek tragedy should be performed are shattered by Liz Lochhhead's vernacular adaptation and Graham McLaren's daring direction. This is certainly the first "Medea" I've ever seen that was played for laughs, so much so I wondered if the show would ever recover to become a tragedy. Amazingly the show does recover, though it is hard not to wonder why such a strategy is necessary.
Lochhead's adaptation made its first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in 2000. Her approach to the Euripides' classic text is to make everything that is subtext overt and then to rephrase it in modern colloquial, often expletive-laden, language. Much of the humour derives from the contrast between the notion of tragedy as high art and the anachronistic speech the characters use. Jason tells Medea, "You can't keep it zipped!" and the plot is summarized with the flip "Hello bride--bye bye bairns". Ultimately, Lochhead is continuing the process of Robinson Jeffers' version of 1947 (seen at Stratford in 2000) that sought to turn a mythological subject into a domestic drama. Like Jeffers, Lochhead removes all references to Medea's divine parentage (the sun-god is her father); Jeffers, however, still allowed Medea magical powers that Lochhead denies. The crown and robe that Medea gives Jason's new bride as a wedding present may be poisoned but not by magic.
Lochhead has also altered Euripides' dramatis personae. She has combined the children's Tutor and the Messenger into one, a Manservant, who does Medea's bidding in the deluded hope of sexual favours. She removes the character Aegeus and with him the notion that Medea could have a life elsewhere. More importantly, Lochhead adds two new female figures. In Euripides we hear of the death of Jason's new bride Glauke but we never see her. Lochhead brings her on stage. In this version Glauke's mentioning that she is already pregnant by Jason is crystallizes Medea's desire for revenge and seals Glauke's doom. Medea's actions make her seem merely the "woman scorn'd", thrown over for a younger woman, but Lochhead makes clear that once Medea takes action against Glauke she has begun a course from which there is no turning back.
The second character Lochhead adds is a sister for the two boys, the only children of Jason and Medea that Euripides shows us. The play may seem to be overtly feminist. The six-woman Chorus exclaim: "We are all survivors of the sex wars. We know men. Punish him for us, Medea." And, indeed, the Chorus exults when it learns of the gruesome death of Glauke and her father Kreon, who had planned to exile Medea. Yet, when Medea contemplates murdering her children to make Jason's pain complete, the Chorus is outraged, citing examples from nature where mothers sacrifice themselves rather than let their offspring come to harm. The addition of Glauke and of a daughter severely compromise any notion of Medea as a feminist icon, her violence directed as much against women as men. Unlike Jeffers' misogynist version, Lochhead's makes Medea guilty of hubris like any male protagonist in tragedy. This Medea does not escape in a chariot pulled by dragons as if her dalliance with human beings meant nothing. Instead, we see that this Medea's focus on her own pride has led her to commit a final action that the Chorus can't condone and that leaves her confused, not triumphant.
To re-imagine this classic text so fundamentally makes Lochhead's an important new version. Whether Lochhead's diction needs to be so colloquial as to provoke laughter, at least in the first half of the play, is a another question. It certainly provides a tour de force for the cast to shift the mood of a work 180 degrees in only 80 minutes. What I found difficult was director Graham McLaren's decision to take the cast's acting style itself into the realm of the sitcom. Medea's first entrance rather than grandeur of emotion leads to a shrug of the shoulders and a "So what's the big deal?" expression. Mugging to the audience for effect and vocally imitating other characters for laughs ultimately trivializes the action. It's true that when a real sense of tragedy arrives at the very end it takes you by surprise and that may have been McLaren's goal. Moving from comedy to tragedy makes a powerful point, but why does the comedy have to be so cheap?
McLaren has designed the piece as if it were serious. A central door in the middle of a cyclorama retains its ancient function. The stage is covered in dead leaves that rustle at any movement, constant reminders of death. The Chorus is clad in grey dresses of a simple Elizabethan cut, the children and men of Colchis in black 19th-century garb and Medea the foreigner in blood red. Kai Fischer's lighting suggests a storm is brewing and about to break. Only Medea's 1960s Jackie hairstyle and the Chorus's hair in avant-garde little knots suggest modern women trapped in ancient garb.
If one disregards the directorial injection of sitcom-like gestures and delivery, the acting itself is excellent. Powerful, low-voiced Maureen Beattie, speaking in an East European accent, dominates as Medea but suggests a brittleness beneath than could crumble. Duncan Duff's Jason seems to have come in from a soap opera his male chauvinism is so slickly obvious, but when the text finally calls for a mixture of grief and anger we see he is capable of greater subtlety. Carol Ann Crawford is delightfully earthy as the Nurse. Her heavy Scots dialect will be insure that not all of her opening speech is understood, but she has such warmth you wish Lochhead had found more for her to do. Lewis Howden as Medea's Manservant delivers his two key messenger's speeches magnificently. Finlay Welsh is a gruff Kreon and Karen Kyle Kreon's gloating daughter Glauke. The women's Chorus delivers the best unison and synchronous movement I've seen in a classic work for years.
The Theatre Babel "Medea" presents itself as a self-consciously modern interpretation. Though the language, compounded by McLaren's direction, risks belittling the subject, Lochhead's interpretation is fresh. Anyone curious about new ways of presenting tragedy in the 21st century should not hesitate.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Maureen Beattie as Medea. ©2000 Nick Hern Books.
2002-04-10
Medea