Was Euripides the first great African playwright? One school of thought links the tradition of Greek tragedy back to Yoruba ritual drama. And though we'll never be certain if western theatre originated on African soil, Euripides is the tragedian whose work is most often used to illustrate the point.
Wole Soyinka was the first to create a confluence of Yoruba and Greek traditions in his version of the Bacchae, produced at the National Theatre 20 years ago. Next spring, ARTTS International undertake a tour of the Trojan Women, in a new version by Nigerian poet and novelist Femi Osofisan. And here, the new associate director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Femi Elufowoju Jr, gives Alistair Elliot's translation of Medea a spellbinding African makeover.
For anyone uninitiated in the canon of Yoruba religious drama (myself included), there is actually nothing that strikes one as particularly alien about Elufowoju's concept - it's simply a masterful staging of a Greek tragedy with different costumes. But this surely proves the point that, as a civic debate on man's responsibilities to the spiritual and material universe, the two traditions are essentially the same.
There have some been some outstanding Medeas of late - Diana Rigg, Fiona Shaw, Josephine Barstow in Cherubini's opera - and Tanya Moodie is entitled to a place among them. She makes her first entrance on all fours, like a hungry female panther, and uses the full swooping range of her remarkably musical voice to chart the difficult psychological transition from Amazon to wronged mother to child-killer.
Elufowoju himself turns in a broad-shouldered performance that cunningly humanises Jason's arrogance. His only deviation from strict Greek propriety is a terrifying extension to the child slaughter sequence. But as a triumphant fusion of two dramatic traditions, Elufowoju's production draws strength from the best of both worlds.
· Until December 13. Box office: 0113-213 7700.
