Medea – Belvoir and ATYP

Overview

As co-author Kate Mulvany explains in the program, Belvoir Downstairs' new Medea is all about playing. The action of Euripides' ancient version of Medea takes place offstage while two young boys — the playful, sulky, and serious Leon (Joseph Kelly) and the exuberant, sad, and dreamy Jasper (Rory Potter) — stay locked in their room, play around, and wonder what's going on between their parents outside, parsing overheard arguments as their mother, Medea (Blazey Best), comes in, talks cryptically, and leaves.

Euripides' version of the story (spoiler ahead) has a distraught Medea kill her children after husband Jason (of the Golden Fleece) leaves her for another woman and tells her he's taking the kids. Anne-Louise Sarks was struck by the killing of four-year-old Darcey Freeman by her own father during a custody battle, and also by the effect on Freeman's older brother. This became linked to the ancient story of Medea, and Sarks found a willing collaborator in Kate Mulvany. (And, later, in ATYP.)

The boys are joyfully clumsy. They have no compunction in looking silly as they muck about in their room. While the boys play, the production itself is rife with dramatic foreshadowing of death and tilts to its classical origins. The wrenching ending of Euripides' version is thought to have been a surprise for his audience, a final twist on the scale of Game of Thrones' first season, for an audience expecting a very different ending. Sarks and Mulvany’s version leaves this surprise as writ in the program, and next to the theatre door. But never in the words of the actors. In fact, even with all its foreshadowing, this production has a distinct lack of foreboding.

The surprise instead is a rending final speech from Medea, leaving us in no doubt about her feelings toward her children. This speech is powerful. Despite a strong and funny performance from both boys, it stays with you afterwards as the emotional core of the play. The boys give us a second-hand account of the ups and downs of their parents’ marriage, but these final words give the play the equally strong adult grief that had been needed from its opening moments.

Sarks and Mulvany's play owes a lot to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (including its clever word games). And, like that play, it's intellectually engaging, funny, slow-paced, and stuffed with all the drawbacks and benefits you get from having the major plot points take place offstage.

This Medea is three plays in one. Multiple versions of reality coexist, like a twice-told myth or a child puzzling out the world in guesses. Two boys’ play reflects an adult world. A very modern custody battle goes wrong. A murderous classical story gets told. The boys — acted with flair, humour, and patience by Kelly and Potter — play with each other, play animal word games, and play war games over the production's on-stage hour. It should be a harsh story to work through, but the meat of this production is, indeed, the play. Instead of giving us Euripides' catharsis of horror and revenge, the play gives the boys one more final hour of powerful play — a long hour full of joy, puzzlement, escapades, and love.

Photo by Heidrun Lohr.