Medea

Hell Hath No Fury …

Medea

by Euripides, adapted by Ben Power

The Questors at the Studio, Questors Theatre, Ealing until 8^th June

Review by Polly Davies

The last time I saw Medea performed it was in a Roman amphitheatre in Syracuse, Sicily at sunset.  So I was a bit apprehensive about how it would translate to a thirteen strong cast adaptation by Ben Power on a small stage in the Studio at Questors.  But I did not need to worry.  The set was nicely redolent of a Greek village and having half the audience standing as onlookers worked well.  From the riveting opening monologue to the dark finale the cast held my attention throughout. 

The play is the archetypical Greek tragedy.  Medea, falls in love with Jason, Captain of the Argon ship, he of the Golden Fleece, and helps him in his quest to find the fleece before leaving her homeland and family to go live with him in Corinth.  All goes well at first and the couple have two (delightfully played) young children, who are the apple of their father’s eye.  But after a few years fortune is not kind to them and their circumstances are dire.  We join the story at this point when Jason has left Medea and is about to marry the daughter of the King of Corinth.

We learn the backstory in a spellbinding narrative by Tamara Gordon Laryea, as the nurse who also tells of her fears for her mistress.  Still madly in love with Jason and distraught at being abandoned, far from home, for a younger woman, Medea has locked herself away, weeping and wailing and refusing all attempts at comfort.  The nurse fears for her sanity.  She has already killed for Jason, what might she do now, deserted and alone, and turning away from her sons.  This was a stunning monologue by Tamara, giving the tale all the gravitas it deserved, whilst sharing the nurse’s concern and trepidation at what might come next.   

And we were not disappointed.  On to the platform stage came Medea herself.  Sarah Sharpe dominated the rest of the play, throwing herself into the role, and indeed to the floor.  Her distress was total, her disbelief that she could have been abandoned so, in a strange and hostile land, utterly credible.  Nothing could comfort her, even the support of the three woman chorus, (Tilly Benson Reid, Rachel Griffiths and Erin Stavrianos) who could not appease her.  The plot is so powerful I hardly noticed that the costumes were modern, but somehow, with all the references to Hecate and the sungods, the modern dress of the chorus seemed incongruous, even though they emerge from the standing audience. 

As the plot developed, Jason and his soon-to-be father-in-law King Kreon (Stuart Watson), came to remonstrate with her.  She pleads not be banished, and when Jason offers to support her when she is banished, she purports to offer an olive branch to him and his future wife.  Roger Beaumont has directed the play sees Medea taking a stand against the patriarchy, seeing Medea as a woman wronged, fighting back, but I didn’t see this on the night.  Maybe Tom Redican was too convincing as Jason, taking a new wife for the sake of the family.  Angry and upset Medea increasingly draws on her magical powers to find a way to cope, eventually turning to deadly revenge as a solution to her disempowerment.  Sarah Sharpe’s Medea convincingly moved from hysteria to a state of cold calm reason.  As her plans for revenge became increasingly deranged, her emotional state turned to cold logic, until taking murderous pleasure in poisoning her rival, Jason’s bride to be and King Kreon seemed inevitable.  Medea had arranged an escape to Athens, with the help of her friend Aegeus (James Burgess), but the double murder is still not enough to assuage her hurt.  In the dramatic final twist, the blood curdling screams of her sons are heard, Jason has now lost everything and Medea is finally avenged.

Polly Davies, May 2024

Photography by Evelina Plonyte