Euripides' Medea at the Citz

Last night I went to see Northern Broadsides’ production of Medea at the Citz and I loved it. I, personally, have a bit of a weakness for Greek theatre, precisely because there’s no way to play it naturalistically. It’s all prayers to the gods, curses on mortals and actions so powerful their stories remain with us two thousand years on. The long speeches of heroic deeds and the presence of the chorus also prove hard to convey to an audience unused to Greek tragedy.
The story of Medea is of course a very famous one - she abandoned and betrayed her father and her country for love, by helping Jason steal its greatest treasure: the Golden Fleece. They married, and Medea used her knowledge of witchcraft to trick and destroy the enemies of Jason. When the play starts Jason has abandoned Medea for the princess of Corinth. To the original Athenian audience, this would be entirely understandable; Medea had previously involved Jason in a murder and was also a foreigner. In the ancient Greek city states, metics (foreign residents) had no rights, and were certainly not acknowledgeable wives. Medea swears vengeance and, despite changes of heart, her overwhelming passion and emotional excess lead her to destroy the controlled governmental structure of Corinth in a highly personal way. The foreigner, the threat from inside, murders the princess and King Creon through a poisoned gown, delivered by her own children. And last, monstrously, she punishes Jason by leaving him alive, and wracked with the grief that his own children were murdered by their mother.
I read this play a few years ago, so I knew what to expect, but Northern Broadsides version boasts a new script by Tom Paulin. There was no great variation in the essence of the action or dialogue from Euripides’ original, apart from a few modern insults, but not too much, thankfully. Sometimes updated versions can seem a little forced and nowhere is this clearer than in clutching at colloquialisms for a little local humour. The biggest change was in the use of the chorus. It consisted of three women, subjects of the King Creon. What Paulin did, was to engage the chorus in a more active line. They engaged in Medea’s witchcraft and prayers for vengeance. They also took a musical role, perhaps in homage to the original Greek choruses that sung their words. Harmonicas, drums and keyboards played bluesy music alongside Medea’s prayers, which identified Medea with the American black ethnic minority. The music in the spell scene, in particular, where Medea prays to Hecate, goddess of witchcraft highlights her cultural differences from the Corinthians as she performs her raging, tribal dance. It is in her difference from the Greeks, her otherness that makes her “Not as other women” and gives her power. The actress playing Medea, Nina Kristofferson, took evident relish in these exotic scenes. Her physicality on stage was powerful, her exoticism was championed - Kristofferson clothed in bright teal velvet, all the others in neutral beiges and browns. Indeed, she seemed almost Amazonian in physical power which gave weight to the fear and respect the male characters in the play afforded to her.
In the final scene the set which had, I admit, puzzled me, finally made sense as the two jagged, semicircular barriers moved together to form the chariot of Hyperion, in which Medea makes her escape. I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t see it coming as I spent a large portion of the play wondering what the set was meant to be, and how on earth they would get the chariot on stage. I was concerned that there would be no chariot, as it is a supreme image of Medea’s otherworldly power and separateness. Kristofferson appeared almost barred in the chariot, a prisoner of her own actions, clutching the sandals of her murdered sons and holding them out, like reigns. Medea’s self-possession and pride was the final image, along with a sense of her foolishness as she repeats “You cannot mock me now!”
Northern Broadsides are a touring company performing at the Citizens Theatre until Saturday the 13th of March. After that you can catch Medea in Scarborough, Newcastle and Salford.
www.northern-broadsides.co.uk
www.citz.co.uk