The Medea we know so well is the Euripides version, but the ancient Greeks wrote at least 30 other plays telling the story of the sorceress who gives her heart to Jason and helps win the golden fleece then takes revenge when she is discarded by her husband after years of marriage. The story is infinitely malleable and still has the power to shock because it raises the issue of what is justice and what is merely revenge.
At the Almeida, Rachel Cusk recently offered a fiercely compelling modern version set amid Islington’s elite, but director George Mann and writer Chino Odimba take the middle path in this production, which melds ancient and new.
Poet Robin Robertson’s translation of Euripides – beautiful, but probably better suited to being read than acted – is spliced with Odimba’s story of a modern-day Medea, called Maddy, uprooted from her Gloucester home to follow her army husband, Jack, around the world, only to be abandoned by him.
Mann co-founded Theatre Ad Infinitum and co-staged the superb Pink Mist, which made language so physically expressive. There are some wonderful things in his Medea. For a start, it’s a good move to have an all-female cast, not least because it subtly shifts perspective. Having a woman (Stephanie Levi-John) play the blustering Jason/Jack heightens the sardonic humour that pricks at male vanity, particularly in the second half. The encounters between Akiya Henry (as Medea/Maddy) and Levi-John are full of the spit and destructiveness that so often follows marital breakdown.
All the acting is first rate, the cast lending the rhythmic metres of Robertson’s text a more contemporary, poetry-slam style. It’s a pity that Mann overdoes the physical stuff during a first half in which the chorus constantly thump and slap themselves or click their fingers, creating the effect of fretful, fidgety birds.
Intercutting the old and new stories has its downside. It makes for a long, repetitive evening that lacks the hurtling momentum of Greek tragedy. It also ends up spelling out what we should surely glean from almost any version of Medea: that romantic love often turns out to be a mirage, that some men have a habit of loving and leaving, and that even in the 21st century many women end up as single mothers living in poverty while their former husbands start comfortable lives with new partners.
Shizuka Hariu’s gauzy designs suggest both modern and ancient, and the second-half stairway to the heavens is an eye-catching marvel. But the white and creamy hues add to the sense of distance in an evening that offers plenty to admire but far less to like, a minimal emotional payoff and no hint of catharsis.
• At Bristol Old Vic until 27 May. Box office: 0117 987 7877.
