Saturday 3 October 2015

Medea – Almeida, London

[seen 01/10/15]


[SPOILERS FROM THE GET-GO. How do you spoiler a story we already know? Well, let’s just say that the plot has undergone some revisions...]

In this adaptation of Medea, Medea is a writer.

And at the end she doesn’t kill her children, they just kill themselves because they’re sad that mummy and daddy are always fighting.

I think.

Just before that bit, the back wall of the set has flown out to reveal a kitschy glowy sunset and the costumes have gone kinda medieval-Macbeth, and Medea *does* lead the kiddies down some stairs in the the middle of the set and then re-emerges without them, and shovels a bunch of earth into the hole. So maybe it’s sort of both.

Fuck it, I’ll just get this out of the way. I *really* didn't get on with this. Albeit it in quite a complicated way. Because lots of it is really good. Kate Fleetwood’s performance is brilliant. So are a lot of the other performances. And there are some passages of really rich ideas and flinty language. Ian McNeil’s set is mostly a slightly deconstructed version of a flat I wouldn’t mind living in (is there any more deadly criticism of a set than “Ooh, that’s a nice chair”?). And Rupert Goold’s production – well, that’s tough, isn’t it? What part is director, what part actor, what part designer and what part writer? The acting here is great, but the production feels – as with The Effect – that his usual conceptual brilliance has mostly been siphoned off slightly into making a workable thing of the text, rather than starting with a work of genius and adding his own. All of which is fair enough, but, net result: not one of of my favourite R.G. productions. And in this instance, I’m not a big fan of the script either.

So what’s the problem? Well, because Medea has been so wholly transposed, I also spent a lot of time not really knowing how much mapping from original to adaptation I was meant to be doing. Ultimately none, I think. This really is just meant to be about a writer who gets left by her actor(?) husband, and then their children kill themselves. It’s a bit like discovering that Troy fell because it just couldn’t be bothered with standing any more. Or Jocasta isn’t really Oedipus’s mom, because that would be too extreme.

As a result, being asked to give the slightest fuck about these people really is asking the audience to dig very deep in their wells of human empathy indeed. Removing the Greek Gods from the equation, and the politics, and, well, pretty much everything else that makes Medea interesting does run the risk of making the whole thing read like a ghastly exercise in the most grandiose solipsism imaginable. I get that individuals feel that their own divorces are an epic tragedy. I do get that. But, Christ, in the greater scheme of things, they just aren’t. Get a grip. And, Jesus, if there’s a group of people it’s especially hard to feel sorry for at the moment it’s the incredibly wealthy. Even if they are getting divorced. Anyway.

If you want another way of looking at it, there is one black actor in this production, and she’s playing the cleaner. She gets some lines, some of them alright. She at least gets to be recognised as a person, but, well, it’s all a bit “Hello, 1930!” Elsewhere, the chorus are here a bunch of sharp-elbowed Primrose Hill [the MSM media designation would be “yummy-mummies” wouldn’t it? But let’s not go there]. You get a sense that the writer (Cusk, not Euripides) *really* hates them. It’s quite strange, you don’t often get to see – well, it’s misogyny, isn’t it? – misogyny of quite that velocity on stage. “These women!” we seem invited to think “What utter cunts these women really are.” Maybe we’re not meant to think precisely that, but since their main purpose is apparently to bitch about our (anti-?)heroine, it’s hard to know what else we’re supposed to be concluding. Maybe misogyny is the wrong word, though. Maybe it’s misanthropy. Or more, an imperious, sociopathic, Ayn Rand-ish selfishness that we’re really looking at. Although I’m not entirely sure what we’re meant to make of Medea either. I *think* that she’s some teller of awkward truths. Which, I guess, if you really think the world is out to get you, she does. Like some sort of upper-middle-class Morrissey.

Now, arguably, this could be chalked up as another example of that thing Vicky Featherstone said the other day about how even she doesn’t really like strong female characters. I’d counter this by saying that in this version most of all, and despite Fleetwood’s furious performance, this Medea is precisely the opposite of a strong character. Which is why it’s infuriating. She’s completely consumed by her divorce. She’s obsessed by this man who’s left her. She’s totally failed the Bechdel Test (she talks about nothing else, and “cleaner” doesn’t have a name). And she doesn’t even give her love-rival an exploding cape. Pfft. It’s funny what you miss in adaptations, isn’t it? I really missed the magic exploding cape (ok, I think traditionally it’s poisoned, but...). I reckon that’s the best thing real-Medea does. That’s properly inspired. Here she returns a pearl choker and they give the new woman a rash. Pfft.

[if we need to say these things: obviously, I’ve nothing against any of the *ideas* here, it’s a good experiment. I can totally see why anyone would be interested to put it together on paper and find out how it works. And, looking at the other reviews, other people seem to have got more from it, which is great. It’s just me and my grumpy old opinion who seems to have not really liked it. And I’m starting to wonder if BITEF is to blame for that – everything I’ve seen since I got back has seemed a bit meh in comparison.]

Anyway, I should stop complaining. Interesting experiment. Great acting. Not my bag.

[I was going to just let this lie, but I just read the first few paras of this Rachel Cusk interview and got as far as “What I want is for people to think, ‘Here are some things I recognise, little echoes of my own experience’” and though, oh, fuck it. Yes. One recognises some things here: the wealthy white people endlessly consumed by the health of their marriages to the exclusion of everything else; the invisibility of everyone else on the planet; the just astonishing, vertigo-inducing sense of privilege and entitlement... You maybe recognise as well the weird itching desire for the soldier out of Blasted to explode through the wall and demonstrate that really there are much, much worse things in the world...]

[EDIT: This is a comment left in the comments section, but I think it's worth promoting to above the line. I mean, if I'm going to privilege my *feelings*, I reckon it's good to have an account of the equal and opposite set of feelings this show can provoke. I completely think both versions/readings/sets-of-senstations are possible.]

Reading your review just prompted some sorting of my thoughts on this production which I experienced from a very different perspective. Not sure I need to send this. O fuck it...

To me this Medea felt like a genuine experiment to update a myth by a woman - a renowned novelist, not a playwright, of outspoken views and whose main obsession has been with form - here she's aided and abetted by great actors and a director committed to no less a task. Rachel Cusk - reference to the writer has been omitted in some reviews (eg Michael Billington), it's probably important to mention the writer as she seems most responsible / has been chosen for looking at the text with a fresh eye - is used to interrogating women and their modern day roles, in particular from the view of the artist outsider, perceiving and being perceived. I didn't need to know any of that to see that this Medea is not just some rich bitch bitching about the divorce settlement - that is crass - more that for all our enlightenment, some home truths have not changed. Men and women can still live in bad faith with each other. Like the usual Medea she's cut off from her parents/home (not a bad thing judging from those represented here), a witch, an outsider, loving towards her children and capable of astonishing cruelty.

No doubt personal mindset and circumstances do matter - when I saw the production I was in the middle of reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (bought on on a whim in the NT bookshop) - I'd skipped to the famous chapter 14 about the independent woman. Some of it was a bit dated since it was written in 1949 but to my amazement much of it wasn't. Much of it is about living in bad faith.

I suppose however much you felt this production reduced the core power of the original myth, its mindful convolutions and dramatic power kept me fascinated and constantly alert - and yes I rode various waves pondering the arc of meaning - yet always I found myself swayed by the sheer audacity, the attempt to transpose ancient weight to ongoing crises - marital, parental and otherwise. As for missing out on the bloody catharsis, I remember thinking just before that episode that the literal butchery will be problematic in this version - there are many shocking ways to kill or silence a child - probably because those excellent young actors were given good ground and had differentiated, affecting parts to play, more than in any adaptation I've seen. The switch in design at that point supported a switch in thinking too. I suddenly remembered a phrase I'd heard a few years ago, 'opulent neglect', referring to how seemingly materially wealthy children (the play is pointedly aimed at the audience) can be seriously harmed by self-absorbed, absentee or distracted parents. You really don't have to be very rich to experience oppulent neglect.

In these shifts there really is other relevance to the necklace thing you hated. The only thing I'd ever read about Rachel Cusk was this http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/24/rachel-cusk-interview-aftermath-outline. Anyway it mostly worked for me. I think



3 comments:

Elena said...

Reading your review just prompted some sorting of my thoughts on this production which I experienced from a very different perspective. Not sure I need to send this. O fuck it...

To me this Medea felt like a genuine experiment to update a myth by a woman - a renowned novelist, not a playwright, of outspoken views and whose main obsession has been with form - here she's aided and abetted by great actors and a director commited to no less a task. Rachel Cusk - reference to the writer has been omitted in some reviews (eg Michael Billington), it's probably important to mention the writer as she seems most reponsible / has been chosen for looking at the text with a fresh eye - is used to interrogating women and their modern day roles, in particular from the view of the artist outsider, perceiving and being perceived. I didn't need to know any of that to see that this Medea is not just some rich bitch bitching about the divorce settlement - that is crass - more that for all our enlightenment, some home truths have not changed. Men and women can still live in bad faith with each other. Like the usual Medea she's cut off from her parents/home (not a bad thing judging from those represented here), a witch, an outsider, loving towards her children and capable of astonishing cruelty.

No doubt personal mindset and circumstances do matter - when I saw the production I was in the middle of reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (bought on on a whim in the NT bookshop) - I'd skipped to the famous chapter 14 about the independent woman. Some of it was a bit dated since it was written in 1949 but to my amazement much of it wasn't. Much of it is about living in bad faith.

I suppose however much you felt this production reduced the core power of the original myth, its mindful convolutions and dramatic power kept me fascinated and constantly alert - and yes I rode various waves pondering the arc of meaning - yet always I found myself swayed by the sheer audacity, the attempt to transpose ancient weight to ongoing crises - marital, parental and otherwise. As for missing out on the bloody catharsis, I remember thinking just before that episode that the literal butchery will be problematic in this version - there are many shocking ways to kill or silence a child - probably because those excellent young actors were given good ground and had differentiated, affecting parts to play, more than in any adaptation I've seen. The switch in design at that point supported a switch in thinking too.
I suddenly remembered a phrase I'd heard a few years ago, 'opulent neglect', referring to how seemingly materially wealthy children (the play is pointedly aimed at the audience) can be seriously harmed by self-absorbed, absentee or distracted parents. You really don't have to be very rich to experience oppulent neglect.

In these shifts there really is other relevance to the necklace thing you hated. The only thing I'd ever read about Rachel Cusk was this http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/24/rachel-cusk-interview-aftermath-outline. Anyway it mostly worked for me. I think

Andrew Haydon said...

I think that's a brilliant response. So, I've just promoted it to Above The Line. Hope that's ok.

Elena said...

Hesitated to send then sidled away so thanks for such a kind response. It really is something to both prompt and allow considered response - up the blog