Medea's Passion Diluted In Mainstage Revival

Medea

directed by Valerie Weinstein

at the Loeb Mainstage

through October 31

The 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.

In 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.

But 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.

This problem is most pronounced with the scenery. The action takes place in a bleak urban landscape that is vaguely post-apocalyptic--a huge chain link fence lines the back of the stage, rusted trash litters the floor, and a blazing sun hangs low in the background. Although impressive, the scenery has little relevance to the plot or action, and simply gets in the way of the drama. In several telling moments, the actors trip on some of the more clunky pieces of trash.

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.

Unfortunately, even these fine performances are undercut by some odd production decisions. Virtually all of the important sequences are accompanied by precious, soap-operaesque music that is totally inappropriate to the gravity of the events. On opening night, the sappy music elicited laughs from the audience during most of the pivotal 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.

Valerie Weinstein's direction and Yvonne Roemer's choreography of this production are also only partially successful. The characters' movements, even in the segments involving no dancing, are highly stylized--Medea waves her arms in ostentatious anger and the chorus members clutch their stomachs when Medea mentions killing her children. This type of exaggerated, ritualistic movement is apparently in recognition of the classic origins of the play.

Sometimes this effect works nicely, especially in a scene where Medea flinches at Jason's touch; the abstracted, impersonal movements of the characters up to this point render this contact all the more frightening. But usually the mechanical, showy movements just make the actors seem stilted and vaguely uncomfortable.

Despite the efforts of some genuinely talented actors, this Medea suffers from overambition. The production tries to be both immediately relevant and classically grand, all with lavish, distracting special effects. Somewhere under all this, the human drama gets drowned out.