Word: medea
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...Medea (freely adapted from the Greek of Euripides by Robinson Jeffers; produced by Robert Whitehead & Oliver Rea) seemed to many first-nighters last week what it seemed to Macaulay a hundred years ago-Euripides' greatest play. To be sure, Euripides didn't have much to do with last week's enthusiasm. More in the limelight was Poet Robinson Jeffers for his quite free, sometimes florid, but generally effective adaptation. Still more in the limelight was John Gielgud for his skillful staging (though not for his performance as Jason). Most in the limelight was Judith Anderson...
There are few greater roles-or grislier ones. In Medea, the wife whom Jason has ignominiously deserted in order to make a more advantageous marriage, are mingled all a woman's hate, an Asiatic princess' stung pride, a sorceress' cunning, a barbarian's violence...
...Cave of the Heart, done to music by Samuel Barber, Choreographer Graham stalked deep into dark Freudian corridors. Using the Medea legend as a starting "state of mind," she did a dance "of possessive and destroying love, a love which feeds upon itself and, when it is overthrown, is fulfilled only in revenge." Actually, the dance spoke for itself, and well: nobody needed program notes to interpret her hard, sure movements of jealous hatred...
...Argonauts went on without Hercules. But when they reached Colchis, it was the goddess Aphrodite who won the Fleece for them. She made her son Eros wait behind a pillar with his bow until handsome Jason strode into the King of Colchis' palace. Then Eros shot Medea, the King's daughter, through the heart, and the love-smitten princess helped to get the Fleece from her father's temple. Mythology's most famous voyage had reached its goal, but Author Graves takes 150 more pages to wind things...
...Wingless Victory and, in the opinion of most professional observers, in effect prematurely ends the play. How Oparre is made first to leave intolerant Salem, and then to destroy herself and her two half-breed children, is a story which has no surprises for those familiar with the Medea legend, or even readers of Joseph Hergesheimer's almost identical narrative, Java Head (1919). An eager minority of the play's first audience impulsively applauded the more ringing of poetic Playwright Anderson's soliloquies, went home satisfied that they had seen and heard an-other Mary of Scotland...