MEDEA

Last week The Sherman  welcomed Headlong Theatre to its main stage to perform a new version of Euripides' Medea, written by Mike Bartlett.  Set on a new build estate in middle England, Medea is having a nervous breakdown. It is the eve of her ex's wedding to the 19 year old daughter of her landlord.  Her neighbour is helping out-taking her son to school and picking him up. A colleague from work calls. The young boy,Tom, sits or lies on his bed, disturbingly silent throughout, playing his computer games while drama unfold around him. A workman hangs around menacingly,saying almost nothing. Medea is behind with the rent and has been given notice to quit.  She belittles all help. She rants about her ex,Jason, to whoever will listen, and to him, accusing him of replacing her with a newer model and tighter sex, but he replies that Kate, his fiance, is kinder, more caring, just nicer than Medea. We witness Medea descend into psychological turmoil. We see her need to feel something, to overcome her mental numbness as she plunges her hand into boiling vegetable water, and later seduces Jason to spend his last night as a single man with her. Tension mounts and she secretly plots her revenge on him and Kate at their wedding party, and her own getaway.
       Until this point I was totally enthralled by her, but her leap from woman scorned to child murderer didn't work for me.  She doesn't want Jason to have Tom. It seems that she doesn't want Tom or does she? Does she love Tom? I felt affection but not maternal love. She's certainly incapable of looking after him. I needed to see and feel more internal conflict before she commits that ultimate act. She uses a kitchen knife and her Dad's axe. She tell us it's the only thing of his she has left, that he travelled away alot and when he came home he liked to chop animals into bits-for fun. She tells us until that morning she believed in God but now she knows there is nothing. At the end she gives God a last chance. The light breaks through the cloud and we hear police sirens.
       It's a powerful adaptation, well performed, and makes me want to go back and read the original. In this version is the writer suggesting that Medea's a witch with supernatural powers personifying evil? Was that what Euripides thought? If so, that takes away some of the play's impact for me.  Today, sadly, there have been several cases reported in the press of distraught fathers who can't stand the thought of their ex -wives with new partners, and who are deeply grieving for the loss of their family, seek revenge, kill their children and then commit suicide. This seems to be Medea's motivation. Her life time punishment may be worse.
       It did also make me wonder about the vulnerability of Tom, the actor, the little boy. Seeing him later sitting on his dad's lap in the foyer, he looked pale. I hope he's not traumatised.