Review: Medea, Humble Theatre

Written for What'sOnStage.com

At first glance, Jodi de Souza’s transposition of Euripides’ ancient heroes to pop culture royalty is a promising one. In many ways, the madness of our own Queen Britney evokes both pity and fear as she swings from summit to trough completely beyond her control. The relentless advance of celebrity is, according to de Souza, the tragic harmartia of our times from which Heat magazine delivers us Aristotelian catharsis.

However, de Souza’s woefully transparent adaptation turns itself inside out in search of projected parallels rather than dramatic action. Here, the press are the new Gods, spokespeople the new servants and politicians the new monarchs. While its targets are incisive, Humble Theatre’s “shockingly modern paraphrase” has all the credible authenticity of Jordan’s tits, teeth and tan.

Former Miss World Medea (Claire Bond), has been betrayed by the father of her unborn twins, Jason Bradbury (Matt Gardner), a footballing superstar moving to America as his playing career winds down. By way of revenge, Medea gifts his new bride-to-be Glauce, the daughter of the American Secretary of State, a dressed laced with quicklime, before undergoing an abortion.

Though not helped by the cramped playing space, Humble’s modest production emerges utterly overburdened by the epic nature of Euripides’ tragedy. For the most part, it feels like an extended monologue of moral wrangling and whimpering indecision, occasionally interrupted by the plot. In the mouths of airheads, the poetic nobility of Euripides’ text morphs into the clunkiness of a Bond script, utterly lacking in subtext or politics. Such lines as “Your honeymoon will be short, and anything but sweet” deserve, and duly receive, a Blofeld-like cackle.

Add to this leading performances so generic in anger and madness – all flailing arms and tilted heads – from Bond and Gardner and the result is a piece utterly devoid of pathos, empathy and ethical ambiguity. Bond’s Medea might as well spend the hour agonisingly torn between Daddy and chips.

Thanks heavens, then, for the isolation allotted to the Messenger’s speech, through which Claire Jared finds some semblance of dramatic conflict. Her pronouncement of Glauce’s death is beautifully paced and deliciously detailed, combining horror and incredulity with a touching nostalgia. It is a rare moment of treasure in the midst of a tiresome and testing evening.