Medea

Play by Euripides

Actors’ Shakespeare Project

February 8 – March 4, 2012

Multicultural Arts Center
Cambridge, MA

Translated by Robin Robertson
Directed by David R. Gammons

With Jennie Israel (Medea) , Nigel Gore (Jason), McCaela Donovan (Chorus), Obehi Janice (Chorus), Sarah Newhouse (Chorus), Grant MacDermott (Tutor, Messenger), Siobhan Brown (Nurse), Joel Colodner (Aegeus, Creon), Adam Freeman (Medea’s son), Jackson Wagner (Medea’s son)

After Jason has his success with the Golden Fleece, he and his wife Medea, with their two sons, are established in Corinth, but not for long. Jason abandons Medea to marry the princess, daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. Medea is, to put it mildly, incensed, and decides to take the ultimate revenge on Jason, murdering everything in sight.

This tragic drama is stark, cruel and direct. Unlike Shakespearean tragedy, with all of its ins and outs, and all of its intricate language, this is clear and to the point. We know what goes on and there is not too much dithering about it. Jason (Nigel Gore) gets to wield a few words in his own pathetic defense, but that is pretty much where speculation and verbal gymnastic end. For the rest of it, language is straightforward and merciless.

Even Sophocles, in Antigone or Oedipus Rex, offers a degree of narrative complexity that forces the viewer to feel the pinch of the tragic vise that tightens around the protagonist. Here, in Medea, everything is tight from the outset and all one needs to do is to touch it to see everything fly apart.

The catharsis that results is a kind of penetrating throb, one that does not work its way into much of a knot, but which simply hurts. And there is something so unremittingly harsh about Euripides’ portrayal that nothing abates it.

The current production transmits that harsh directness exceptionally well.

The translation by Robin Robertson is extremely accessible and easy to understand, but is not facile. It works very well here.

The direction uses a lot of sound and gestural effects, giving it a dancelike quality that at times calls Kabuki to mind.

There is an abundance of acting talent in this show.

Jennie Israel (Medea), a longstanding member of the ASP who I have seen in many productions there (and who I also saw last season at the New Repertory Theater in Boston Marriage by David Mamet) has a forceful and dire presence well-suited to the role of Medea. She can be tender and intense and compellingly manages to convey what it takes to make the decision to murder one’s children.

Nigel Gore (Jason), who recently played opposite Tina Packer at the Central Square Theatre in the twenty-plus-hours-long five-part marathon, Women of Will, is a superbly convincing Jason, seductive and pathetic in one fell swoop. His explanation of his motives comes off perfectly, with a lucid smarminess, if such a thing is possible.

The Chorus (Sarah Newhouse, McCaela Donovan, Obehi Janice) is truly outstanding, with a crispness, forcefulness and unity that is palpable.

Sarah Newhouse played Cordelia in the ASP’s King Lear a number of years ago (among numerous other roles there) and is a wonderful guiding presence to this choral trio.

McCaela Donovan caught my attention last spring in the Speakeasy Stage Company’s production of The Drowsy Chaperone and as well in the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of Bernstein’s Candide last fall. She is amazingly versatile. An extremely talented comic actress in those productions, she demonstrates here an equivalent talent for raw and compelling drama.

Obehi Janice’s resonance and clarity of voice adds a beautiful complement to round out the trio.

Joel Colodner, another longtime ASP member (who I also saw at the Lyric Stage last season in My Name is Asher Lev) is capably authoritative and clear-throated in his two kingly roles here.

Grant Macdermott is wonderfully evocative as the tutor and the messenger, conveying with passion and articulation the horrors of what ensued.

Siobhan Brown as the Nurse complements this all with a full bodied expression of conscience.

At times, the particular elements of staging struck me as a bit too busy (did the two sons and the tutor have to kick the soccer ball around quite that much?), but cumulatively the whole thing fell together and well served its dramatic purpose, providing a dire, but strong and persuasive, evening at the theater.

– BADMan