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Chairs lie strewn about the stage as if a terrific fight has just taken place. A man lies motionless and bleeding on the floor, half covered by pieces of broken wall. A nurse -- in white -- waits in agitation against the back wall of the raw space, under the "exit" sign. When the audience finally settles in, the play begins. The corpse begins to speak. Though his body is obscured, his bloody face is clearly visible in close-up on a closed-circuit TV. Jason laments himself -- the fallen warrior, recalls his former glory -- the foam on the sea as his ship, the Argos, cut through the waves, his victories and conquests, come to such an end. Cut down by a woman. At the end of his speech, Jason gets up and walks away. And so begins the playing of The Medea, a new production by Actors Without Borders at LaMama. The Medea story is rendered in reverse. Step by step, we journey backwards through the horrendous tale -- the confrontation of Medea and Jason after he learns that she has killed his sons; the killing of the sons; the sons' passive complicity in their mother's plot to kill Jason's new bride; Medea's duplicitous speech to Jason saying she has changed her mind and now sees the wisdom of his decision to marry Creon's daughter. Back, back, and further back into the roots of the story, following the crime of passion --like the Nile -- to its source. Zishan Ugurlu is Medea, passionate, wicked, unabashedly proud. As the foreigner-gypsy/witch, the strange "other" that Jason once brought back as his trophy, she knows exactly what she is doing, every step of the way. Dima Dubson and Oleg Dubson render the two teenage sons with a modern nonchalance worthy of royal preppies, with long hair, disheveled elegance, and mod ties. When Medea calls one son into her inner chamber (to kill him), son number two hangs out onstage, smoking, waiting his turn. When the sounds of the first struggle subside, the door opens, and she calls to him. As he enters the chamber we hear her, unseen, tell him, "Take off your shirt." The set includes a small room/box/stall modeled on a classical Greek Skene, which performs the function of the private quarters of this royal family, the part of the palace closed off to tourists and outsiders. At all times, however, a closed-circuit camera documents all the goings-on within this room, allowing the audience to be privy to the royal family's behavior when they are not "onstage." Brilliantly pandering to our insatiable curiosity about the private lives of royals/celebrities, the closed-circuit TV allows us to follow the -- sometimes hilarious -- "off-camera" doings of the Medea family in their private quarters. The boys play pranks on the nurse who has obvious affection for them. The boys get a snack of apple slices, and fool around with their camcorder. They make their own home video and mug and grin into the camera. The nurse lets her hair down and dances around the room. Medea speaks candidly about her plans and intentions: "It's payday." The walls of this interior space portray a Mediterranean scene: an archway, blue sea, sky, distant city. Dan Illian is Jason, in Prince Charles cadet formal dress-wear, oafishly arrogant, blind to his own self-deception. In one delicious telling moment, he comes to speak to Medea and finds one of his sons hanging out. He does some macho-type jostling around with the boy, trying to engage him in some playful boxing. When the son sullenly refuses to react, Jason desists, but not without tossing off: "What are you, a mama's boy?" A moment later, the boy brushes his father's full-dress military cap off the table and onto the floor. The move does not go unnoticed by the father. In one scene, Jason and Medea make love for the last time. This (for once) well done, convincing bit of staging affords a fascinating look at the two principals in this nasty drama. Medea has just convinced Jason that she will submit to him, and accept his second marriage. Like a spider to a fly, she draws him into her trap and reveals the depth of their carnal passion, enjoying him one more time for herself before proceeding with her plan for his doom. We also see Jason's pride in his sexual prowess, the very pride that blinds him to what is really going down. The nurse (Aimee McCormick) offers a cool, lithe, crisp, contrast to Ugurlu's earthy, calculating Medea. As the story goes backwards we see the nurse's simple loyalty to Medea and the boys. She offers practical advice (take the boys and leave), optimistically clueless to the full depth of Medea's unbending focus on revenge. McCormick's scene at the beginning of the play -- when she comes upon the final scene of destruction -- is simple and eloquent. The family entourage also includes a musician (Margareth Kammerer) who sings and plays original compositions on guitar as commentary and transition, from both within and without the Skene. Director Jay Scheib and dramaturg Peter Campbell have done a masterful job in creating the text for the play, a compilation from various sources including Heiner Müller, Euripides, and Seneca. Alternating between highly poetic and mordantly modern, it works. In the mouths of the accomplished actors, the words flow like honey, or fit like kid gloves. Most of all, the great revelation of The Medea is the relief it offers from that inexorable juggernaut: fate. Scheib explains, "We all know how Medea ends. We barely remember how it starts." The play -- turned on its ass --becomes a lurid detective novel or film noir. Instead of starting at the beginning, and staring down the long, ineluctable journey toward ruin, Scheib turns the binoculars around. At the outset, we see in close-up, the aftermath of the mess. We have come upon a shipwreck, after the fact, and like forensic detectives, follow the clues backwards to find out just exactly what went wrong. We know the perpetrators and their alibis and motivations. Going backwards, however, we can see in clear relief that this was a story of method acting gone wrong. These human beings allowed themselves to be seduced and consumed by their own pride, arrogance, and vanity every step of the way. And how did it all begin? Where does the story start? The play ends with all the characters inside the family's private quarters, whooping it up at the wedding party of Jason and Medea. Medea's face looms on the closed-circuit TV with glittering eyes as she leans forward to light celebratory candles. Excellent, intelligent theatercraft at work here. Don't miss this one. "The
Medea" Copyright © 2005 by theater2k.com. All rights reserved. |
