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magidThis weekend I saw themedea, at the Loeb Ex. It was developed based on the stories in Euripides and Seneca, and drawing on Heiner Muller's Waterfront Wastland/ Medea Material/ Landscape with Argonauts, which I'd never heard of (Landscape with Argonauts sounds like an oil painting), along with other modern texts.
An excerpt from the program: "...we began to play more with an emerging dynamic between heaviness and lightness, and also noticed that the idea of memory was effecting a particular kind of work on the time and space of our narrative." In other words, a concept piece. Perhaps not surprisingly, I thought it was a bit too highfalutin', and could've done with a bit of editing as well.
The set was all white (this is the first show I've seen where the crew wore all white), with three sides of a rectangle on wires to be angled with the floor. The rest of the set included a bench in front of one of the two engraved lucite panels, and a small white frame suspended from the ceiling (mostly useless). On one side were the musicians: a violinist, cellist, singer, and drummer (who had many things to percuss, not just drums, including empty water containers, plastic buckets, and sheets of metal).
The actors were two women, both Medeas in red, and two men, both Jasons in black. Each also played the occasional smaller part as well. The show started off with a slide of text projected against the back wall of the set (done for each break, in exaggeratedly uneven 'typewriter' font), followed by a rather long dance by the four actors. Eventually, there were spoken words, but that set the tone for the rest of the show. Some times it worked well, having two Jasons deliver the same scolding speech with completely different intonations, or one external and one internal Medea. But the play went on too long, and seemed to focus on some small things too much compared to some larger issues. And they didn't have a special effect they didn't like, either. Not only were there musicians, there was canned music in certain scenes as well. There was the vocalist, and the Medeas sang too. There was much dance. There was the big part of the set that moved, which didn't seem essential at all. There were slides, and some voice-overs. There were colored lights, and strobe lights. There were those lucite panels, made so that there were tubes attached above so red liquid could flow down over them (the sons' death).
Brief plot synopsis: Jason comes on a quest for the golden fleece, and asks Medea's help, since she's a sorceress. She does help (the dragon's teeth soldiers), and she sails away with him. To forstall pursuit, she murders her brother and casts his hacked-up body into the sea. Her father the king would spend his time recovering all of his son's body. Time passes. Jason falls for someone else, and decides to cast Medea off. She (a) sends the new bride a poisoned robe that bursts into flame when worn, and (b) kills her (and Jason's) sons, rather than being parted from them. She dies, of course.
In this production, Medea's father pushes her towards Jason, knowing that he's come for the fleece. Which doesn't work so well with why she murders her brother. Jason finds when he gets home that she's powerful and such, but being from an outlander place, she's not civilized in the ways he expects. Their relationship breaks, and he's cruel enough to say he doesn't remember ever loving her. What isn't explained is why she'd poison her rival, if it's Jason's lack of love that's the problem. It's clear that the other girl is the symptom, that he'll never come back to her anyway. So that didn't work, either. They did say that she'd be exiled without her boys, and Jason said he'd check up on them every so often, which made it clearer why she might feel the need to kill them (er, given that she's stuck in a Greek myth, anyway). The other big issue I had with this was that they delayed and delayed and delayed the ending. We were there, and then poof, no forward movement for three acts (or whatever it was), which was frustrating, and took away from what they had done well.
Next up at the Loeb: Camus' Caligula.
An excerpt from the program: "...we began to play more with an emerging dynamic between heaviness and lightness, and also noticed that the idea of memory was effecting a particular kind of work on the time and space of our narrative." In other words, a concept piece. Perhaps not surprisingly, I thought it was a bit too highfalutin', and could've done with a bit of editing as well.
The set was all white (this is the first show I've seen where the crew wore all white), with three sides of a rectangle on wires to be angled with the floor. The rest of the set included a bench in front of one of the two engraved lucite panels, and a small white frame suspended from the ceiling (mostly useless). On one side were the musicians: a violinist, cellist, singer, and drummer (who had many things to percuss, not just drums, including empty water containers, plastic buckets, and sheets of metal).
The actors were two women, both Medeas in red, and two men, both Jasons in black. Each also played the occasional smaller part as well. The show started off with a slide of text projected against the back wall of the set (done for each break, in exaggeratedly uneven 'typewriter' font), followed by a rather long dance by the four actors. Eventually, there were spoken words, but that set the tone for the rest of the show. Some times it worked well, having two Jasons deliver the same scolding speech with completely different intonations, or one external and one internal Medea. But the play went on too long, and seemed to focus on some small things too much compared to some larger issues. And they didn't have a special effect they didn't like, either. Not only were there musicians, there was canned music in certain scenes as well. There was the vocalist, and the Medeas sang too. There was much dance. There was the big part of the set that moved, which didn't seem essential at all. There were slides, and some voice-overs. There were colored lights, and strobe lights. There were those lucite panels, made so that there were tubes attached above so red liquid could flow down over them (the sons' death).
Brief plot synopsis: Jason comes on a quest for the golden fleece, and asks Medea's help, since she's a sorceress. She does help (the dragon's teeth soldiers), and she sails away with him. To forstall pursuit, she murders her brother and casts his hacked-up body into the sea. Her father the king would spend his time recovering all of his son's body. Time passes. Jason falls for someone else, and decides to cast Medea off. She (a) sends the new bride a poisoned robe that bursts into flame when worn, and (b) kills her (and Jason's) sons, rather than being parted from them. She dies, of course.
In this production, Medea's father pushes her towards Jason, knowing that he's come for the fleece. Which doesn't work so well with why she murders her brother. Jason finds when he gets home that she's powerful and such, but being from an outlander place, she's not civilized in the ways he expects. Their relationship breaks, and he's cruel enough to say he doesn't remember ever loving her. What isn't explained is why she'd poison her rival, if it's Jason's lack of love that's the problem. It's clear that the other girl is the symptom, that he'll never come back to her anyway. So that didn't work, either. They did say that she'd be exiled without her boys, and Jason said he'd check up on them every so often, which made it clearer why she might feel the need to kill them (er, given that she's stuck in a Greek myth, anyway). The other big issue I had with this was that they delayed and delayed and delayed the ending. We were there, and then poof, no forward movement for three acts (or whatever it was), which was frustrating, and took away from what they had done well.
Next up at the Loeb: Camus' Caligula.