Actors' Shakespeare Project's Medea
Feb. 13th, 2012 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasThe Actors' Shakespeare Project has occasionally forays outside their nominal role of performing Shakespeare. They've done John Webster's Duchess of Malfi, for instance. This time, they go both older and newer: Euripedes' play is, of course, about 2440 years old, but the translation they use for their script is the 2008 translation by Scottish poet Robin Robertson, into contemporary prose.
Their costuming and stage setting is similarly modern-yet-out-of-time -- all the male actors are in obviously modern dress -- one of Medea's sons is wearing Superman pajamas at one point -- but the female characters' costume is less clearly time-delineated, and the three women who represent the female population of the city, and are also sort of the Greek chorus, and who have emotional resonances with the Fates and the Furies, are in obviously Greek-influenced costumes. The stage is strewn with modern toys -- a Rubix cube, Slinky, some Transformers, that sort of thing -- and also unhewn rocks, which are arranged in a possibly-magical circle.
We saw the production yesterday, at a Sunday matinee, and ASP follows those Sunday matinees with an actor talk-back session, so we got to ask questions and hear a little more about how the actors, themselves, were thinking about their roles. Jennie Israel talked about how she chose to play Medea as a woman who is fundamentally sane and rational, who is NOT crazy, whose every action comes out of her consistent worldview (of which an important point is, "those who wrong me must NOT get away with it").
Here's the thing: Medea is fundamentally sympathetic. She explains to the women of Corinth/the chorus/all of us how she was wronged, and makes us all believe it, and understand that she's fundamentally in the right here. And then, as her plan unfolds, we are, all of us, implicitly complicit in it, because we bought into it at the beginning.
I think I'm going to have to get spoilery from here on in, so I'll throw a cut tag in. I know that the whole "spoiler freshness" rule would tend to exempt works that are twenty-four centuries old, but the thing is, if you're in Boston, and you DON'T know much about the myth of Medea, and you can manage it, go ahead and see it WITHOUT knowing what you're getting into. I mean, as much as possible I try to avoid spoilers about Shakespeare plays I haven't yet seen.
Which probably doesn't really follow for Greek tragedies -- Euripedes' audience would have already been generally familiar with the myth of Medea when they went in to see the play, so they wouldn't have needed spoiler warnings -- the cool thing about this play is what he DOES with the characters and how he presents the emotions behind the actions. So feel free to keep reading even if you aren't familiar with the play, but also, feel free to skip it. As you see fit.
So -- the basic story. Jason had his ship, the Argo, and his sailors, the Argonauts, and they went out and had adventures. On the way, he meets Medea, falls in love, takes her back to Corinth with him, they get married. They have two sons.
Jason abandons them, and starts sleeping with the king of Corinth's daughter, and plans to marry her. Medea is NOT pleased about this, and says the sorts of things about Jason, and the princess, and the king, that you'd probably say, too, if you were in that situation.
The king, hearing about what she's been saying, decides to have her banished. And her and Jason's sons, too, for good measure.
Jason comes by later, to explain how he's TOTALLY the good guy here, and that he was just thinking of Medea the whole time, and he's only schtupping the princess because it will get them in good with the king, so that will give them protection and safety, for her and the kids, and, can't you see that he's ONLY doing this for HER, and how could she be so ungrateful to him?
Medea, for her part, points out that Jason would be dead many times over, since on his adventures with the Argonauts, Medea kept clearing people out of their way, murdering a BUNCH of people (including her own brother) for Jason's benefit.
Jason totally doesn't buy that he owes Medea ANYTHING, but, heck, just to be nice, he'll give her some cash just so when she goes into banishment, she'll have some money, and he leaves.
Anyone seeing the flaw in Jason's reasoning yet? It has to do with double-crossing, to her face, a person who has the willingness and ability to kill a half-dozen people. . .
See, but, by this time, we're totally in Medea's corner. If there was any doubt before this who was right and who was wrong, Jason's defense of his actions pretty much clears that up.
So Medea's got her plan here. She's got one day before the banishment is enforced, and she will spend that day making sure that nobody ever gets to gloat over her fall.
And then we get into the horror movie stuff. Wes Craven would have trouble filming the description of what she does to the princess and the king.
And THEN comes the bad part. Medea's rationalization is, frankly, at least somewhat better than Jason's . . . after all, she reasons, at this point, she's killed the princess and king. Someone's going to kill her kids eventually in revenge.
The staging of Medea's murder of her sons in this production is deeply effective. Screams, bloody handprints on windows . . .
For all that, though, the most terrifying part of the play was the fact that the characters were totally, completely realistic.
Their costuming and stage setting is similarly modern-yet-out-of-time -- all the male actors are in obviously modern dress -- one of Medea's sons is wearing Superman pajamas at one point -- but the female characters' costume is less clearly time-delineated, and the three women who represent the female population of the city, and are also sort of the Greek chorus, and who have emotional resonances with the Fates and the Furies, are in obviously Greek-influenced costumes. The stage is strewn with modern toys -- a Rubix cube, Slinky, some Transformers, that sort of thing -- and also unhewn rocks, which are arranged in a possibly-magical circle.
We saw the production yesterday, at a Sunday matinee, and ASP follows those Sunday matinees with an actor talk-back session, so we got to ask questions and hear a little more about how the actors, themselves, were thinking about their roles. Jennie Israel talked about how she chose to play Medea as a woman who is fundamentally sane and rational, who is NOT crazy, whose every action comes out of her consistent worldview (of which an important point is, "those who wrong me must NOT get away with it").
Here's the thing: Medea is fundamentally sympathetic. She explains to the women of Corinth/the chorus/all of us how she was wronged, and makes us all believe it, and understand that she's fundamentally in the right here. And then, as her plan unfolds, we are, all of us, implicitly complicit in it, because we bought into it at the beginning.
I think I'm going to have to get spoilery from here on in, so I'll throw a cut tag in. I know that the whole "spoiler freshness" rule would tend to exempt works that are twenty-four centuries old, but the thing is, if you're in Boston, and you DON'T know much about the myth of Medea, and you can manage it, go ahead and see it WITHOUT knowing what you're getting into. I mean, as much as possible I try to avoid spoilers about Shakespeare plays I haven't yet seen.
Which probably doesn't really follow for Greek tragedies -- Euripedes' audience would have already been generally familiar with the myth of Medea when they went in to see the play, so they wouldn't have needed spoiler warnings -- the cool thing about this play is what he DOES with the characters and how he presents the emotions behind the actions. So feel free to keep reading even if you aren't familiar with the play, but also, feel free to skip it. As you see fit.
So -- the basic story. Jason had his ship, the Argo, and his sailors, the Argonauts, and they went out and had adventures. On the way, he meets Medea, falls in love, takes her back to Corinth with him, they get married. They have two sons.
Jason abandons them, and starts sleeping with the king of Corinth's daughter, and plans to marry her. Medea is NOT pleased about this, and says the sorts of things about Jason, and the princess, and the king, that you'd probably say, too, if you were in that situation.
The king, hearing about what she's been saying, decides to have her banished. And her and Jason's sons, too, for good measure.
Jason comes by later, to explain how he's TOTALLY the good guy here, and that he was just thinking of Medea the whole time, and he's only schtupping the princess because it will get them in good with the king, so that will give them protection and safety, for her and the kids, and, can't you see that he's ONLY doing this for HER, and how could she be so ungrateful to him?
Medea, for her part, points out that Jason would be dead many times over, since on his adventures with the Argonauts, Medea kept clearing people out of their way, murdering a BUNCH of people (including her own brother) for Jason's benefit.
Jason totally doesn't buy that he owes Medea ANYTHING, but, heck, just to be nice, he'll give her some cash just so when she goes into banishment, she'll have some money, and he leaves.
Anyone seeing the flaw in Jason's reasoning yet? It has to do with double-crossing, to her face, a person who has the willingness and ability to kill a half-dozen people. . .
See, but, by this time, we're totally in Medea's corner. If there was any doubt before this who was right and who was wrong, Jason's defense of his actions pretty much clears that up.
So Medea's got her plan here. She's got one day before the banishment is enforced, and she will spend that day making sure that nobody ever gets to gloat over her fall.
And then we get into the horror movie stuff. Wes Craven would have trouble filming the description of what she does to the princess and the king.
And THEN comes the bad part. Medea's rationalization is, frankly, at least somewhat better than Jason's . . . after all, she reasons, at this point, she's killed the princess and king. Someone's going to kill her kids eventually in revenge.
The staging of Medea's murder of her sons in this production is deeply effective. Screams, bloody handprints on windows . . .
For all that, though, the most terrifying part of the play was the fact that the characters were totally, completely realistic.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-14 11:25 am (UTC)_Hippolytus_ is even better for that, in some ways,
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-14 11:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-14 01:44 pm (UTC)On Medea: I never really was complicit... if I had been, I suspect something like Columbine would have happened fifteen or twenty years earlier... because really, it's the same thing. Then too, I'm willing (apparently) to live without honour - e.g. not to buy into Medea's original premise - so that those like me might be accorded honour and privilege in the future.
Kiralee
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-14 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-14 07:06 pm (UTC)As behavoir, do I think it's admirable? Certainly not. Is it understandable? To a degree...
Is it acceptable? Let us say that any system which fails to account for the possibility is flawed to the point of being unjust, and deserves to fail... and to the extent that the play, Medea, illustrates this, it's a good thing, and does a valuable service to society...
But in a system that does provide for other means of redress, it isn't acceptable. On the other hand, justice delayed is justice denied - in other words, if the means of redress is theoretical rather than practical, than whoever has been wronged is, if not morally right at least not morally wrong, in attacking those who have wronged them.
I almost certainly wouldn't - but if the person I was attacking thought I *shouldn't* just because they were the ones who would get hurt, or thought their actions were OK just because they thought I *couldn't* hurt them, I would consider that a flaw in their reasoning.
Kiralee
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 05:48 am (UTC)