Euripides’ Medea has achieved such mythical status it is subject to endless variations. But, where Rachel Cusk’s new version at the Almeida cheats us of the cathartic climax, this radical update by Kate Mulvany and Anne-Louise Sarks, that originated at the Belvoir Sydney, does not duck the story’s horror. Its big idea is to see the action from the perspective of the heroine’s two children and the effect is as startling as Tom Stoppard’s notion of viewing Hamlet from the vantage point of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The two kids have been locked in their bedroom while mum and dad fight out their battles off stage. Jasper is fly and clever while his sporty elder brother, Leon, is quietly protective and together they pass the time as best they can. They rampage round the room firing toy guns, play word games, speculate over their future and even tell stories about a golden fleece symbolised by their dad’s woolly sweater. Periodically Medea looks in, first to show them an ominously gift-wrapped present for dad’s new friend and then to express her undying love.
The brilliance of the idea is that it offers a wholly plausible picture of the way children react to domestic upheaval with a mixture of alarm and excitement. At the same time, it shows how a distraught Medea is driven to make a terrible sacrifice. What is astonishing, however, is the confidence with which the two child actors (there are alternating casts) carry the show. Bobby Smalldridge, fresh from the Almeida Oresteia, is spry and funny as Jasper and Keir Edkins-O’Brien is full of touching sibling concern as the older Leon. Emma Beattie meanwhile captures Medea’s consuming maternal passion in a production by Anne-Louise Sarks that genuinely makes us see an old play through new eyes.
• At Gate, London, until 28 November. Box office: 020-7229 0706.
