This is a shattering , explosively powerful performance that should perhaps come with a warning to allow time to recover afterwards.
In Ben Powers idiomatic translation from the ancient Greek there is no blank verse but it is still extremely powerful. Intriguingly, this is the first time that the National has presented MEDEA . The production is well directed by Carrie Cracknell.
Michaela Coel as the nurse , a member of Medea’s shrinking entourage, opens the show with a chilling monologue that sets up everything that is to follow.
In MEDEA we see the story of love transformed to hate, a wronged woman who revenges herself upon her man Jason by slaughtering their children. Medea , as one of my colleagues writes, is arguably the greatest of all the axe-wielding women in drama,– more inconsolable than Clytemnestra, tougher than Lady Macbeth’.
Euripides’ play has been updated to the present time with contemporary costumes and a fabulous split-level set by Tom Scutt , with a Corinthian palace above and a dark forest below, symbolising the play’s division between public and private worlds, with the dark world of Medea separate from everyone else’s. Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp’s haunting , atmospheric score also adds much to the production.
The Chorus of women act as bridesmaids , in Melbourne based Lucy Guerin’s strange,stiff. jerky choreography. They comment on the action, unable to stop the catastrophe from happening. They speak in almost mechanical, semi monotone voices, perhaps morphing into outward projections of the voices in Medea’s head, helping us see her her unraveling mind. They twitch and convulse with the flashes of rage in Medea’s mind, then dance, miserably and distressed, after the poisoning murder of Jason’s new wife.
The show is Helen McCrory ‘s who gives a searing, impassioned performance that is a knockout. She provides a deeply complex and multi layered performance , full of contradictions, rational yet irrational, swinging from deeply loving and humaneto manipulative to fiendishly murderous.
Her entrance at the end for her final monologue is Kabuki like, stylised horror and despair, – or is she an agonised Mother Courage? ! Her tear streaked face is a bleak mask with hollow eyes as she descends into madness and wanders into the foggy forest (marvelous atmospheric lighting and set).
Danny Sapani’s Jason is shown as a blustering, wily politician who uses euphemisms and Sir Humphrey Appleby speak to justify his abandonment of Medea.
The play also clearly reveals that it is as much his tragedy as hers.
Conflicting morals within the play are also seen in the elegant Athenian king, Aegeus, who offers Medea sanctuary: as played by Dominic Rowan, he is both gentle and unselfish, yet simultaneously a dithering diplomat anxious not to offend the ruling Corinthians.
This is a deeply disturbing, traumatising production of immense complexity and power .
Running time 90 mins (approx) no interval.
NT Live MEDEA screens at selected cinemas from October 4
For more about NT Live Medea, visit http://www.sharmillfilms.com.au/?tag=medea