Word: medea
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Courtroom as religious rite: Apollo--the law--sifts through the disorders of Dionysus--human nature in the wild, where Medea's children and Orestes' mother and Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman all are murdered. To re-establish order, the rational takes the irrational to court. Sometimes the result is itself irrational, but in the drama, you may see for a moment into the society's heart...
...Euripides, Medea...
...dazzling image can be enough to make an otherwise competent production unforgettable, and the Medea that has been imported to Broadway from London climaxes with an astonishing tableau. After wreaking the most comprehensive revenge that a scorned wife has ever devised -- slaying her cheating husband's royal fiance and soon-to-be father-in-law, then slaughtering her sons so her husband's bloodline will die with him -- Medea sets sail for a new life. Most stagings leave her outside her home merely talking of departure. In director Jonathan Kent's version, a wall topples to reveal Diana Rigg apparently...
...that most archaic of theatrical ploys, the chorus. The set, a vast wall of rusted metal panels that bang like thunder and tumble away at key moments, is effective but excessive, a tacit confession of shaky faith in the power of the play's words. That doubt is foolish. Medea is the greatest role ever written for a woman, fiercer than Lady Macbeth, more lovelorn than Phedre. Despite Rigg's shortcomings as Euripides' virago, the role makes her the odds-on contender to join Caldwell and Judith Anderson, who played the part on Broadway in 1948, as winners...
Diana Rigg takes on Medea, the greatest role for a woman...