Word: medea
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Harvard-Radcliffe Drama Club's production of Medea tries to be both epic and contemporary, and too often just seems stranded somewhere in between. In an effort to update the tale of the exiled sorceress who kills her children to spite her unfaithful husband, this production offers plenty of modern allusions, which work only with varying success...
...certain places, these references are convincing. Aegeus (Ben Vilhauer), the king of Corinth who has banished Medea, appears as a sleazy politico with a carefully blow-dried hairdo. He thunders that "the best things in life are family and country." Vilhauer's glib, funny performance suggests Medea as a figure in rebellion against conventional morality and "family values" fascism. A contemporary poem which the chorus recites to open the show similarly connects Medea's story to issues of abortion and societal restrictions on women...
...many of the other allusions are more gratuitous. The costumes, for example, mix antiquity and modernity with no apparent purpose. Medea's children appear in sneakers, T-shirts and togas; Jason wears a suit with a classical sash. This juxtaposition seems to have little point except to remind the audience that this is a Serious Greek Tragedy...
These elements detract from some of the better performances. Jennifer Sun is excellent as Medea. Her portrayal of the sorceress as a strong, driven and bizarrely triumphant woman is convincing. She succeeds at the difficult feat of making an unrepentant infanticidal mother a compelling and even sympathetic character. J.C. Wolfgang Murad, as Medea's wayward husband Jason, is a little hesitant in the early sections, but reaches a convincingly enraged pitch by the final scenes...
Throughout the play, overblown production techniques inadvertently makes the play more funny than awe-inspiring. The final scene, a bitter exchange between Jason and Medea, is a case in point. The chariot from Euripides' play is here replaced with a gargantuan elevator/space ship device complete with glowing neon tubes. Medea, suspended in this contraption, curses Jason through the chain link fence while industrial music crashes away and lights flash. Dwarfed by the "E.T"-like production, the exchange itself seems rather trifling...