Movie review: Medea

Medea. Photo / ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk

The NT Live* project reached cinemas here five years ago in July and this newest show is the oldest: it's the series first Greek tragedy, Euripides' 2500-year-old story of a woman who exacts the most hideous revenge when her husband deserts her for another woman.

That husband is Jason (Sapani), of the Golden Fleece fame, and Euripides is at pains to remind us that theirs was a marriage founded on a betrayal of her people.

When the play opens Jason has deserted her in favour of Galuce, daughter of Creon, king of Corinth and the play's ending is plainly prefigured in the opening speech: it gives nothing away, then, to say that Medea is a mother who kills her children.

So Medea is not a whodunnit or even a why-did-she-do it.

"Terrible things breed in broken hearts," a chorus-like character tells us, "and sorrow always turns to rage."

Quite how Euripides intended us to see Medea is a matter of great scholarly dispute: was the playwright a proto-feminist ("We give up everything," Medea says at one point, "and what do we get in return?") or was he delivering a misogynistic warning about the threat a disobedient wife poses to the patriarchal order (she does, after all, cook up witches' brews).

This bold and accessible production doesn't answer that neatly, though modern touches like Xboxes and iPhones confront us with the story's timelessness.

But it is driven by a titanic main-role performance - only slightly undermined by microphone problems - a striking production design and a spooky and punchy soundtrack (by Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp).

The new text by Ben Power sounds ringingly modern even with references to exile and the gods: a declamatory tone is almost entirely absent and only a couple of lines flirt with the banal.

This is, in short, a thrilling version of an ancient classic.

Verdict: Bold and thrilling production

Cast: Helen McCrory, Danny Sapani
Director: Carrie Cracknell
Rating: M
Running time: 108 mins

* NT Live is a project of London's National Theatre in which productions are filmed and broadcast in real time to cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic. We get them here on hard drive a few weeks later.

- TimeOut