11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 25 | Enzian Theater, 1300 S. Orlando Ave., Maitland | 407-629-0054 | enzian.org | $20
“Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour.” So spits Medea, the betrayed wife who takes a terrible revenge in Euripides’ chilling tragedy Medea. This live broadcast from London’s National Theatre updates the language, costumes and sets, but preserves the harrowing plot: a cast-aside wife murders her children (not a spoiler – it’s revealed in the first three minutes on stage).
We are all pummeled with shocking news every day by TV and the Internet, to the point that a mother murdering her children seems almost a common occurrence, so it’s not the plot that keeps Medea fiercely relevant 24 centuries after it was written. No, it’s the feeling that Medea acts on – the infinitely self-renewing grief and rage of the rejected – that’s familiar to most of us, though few of us embody it with such broken beauty as Helen McCrory in Carrie Cracknell’s production. Let the bodies hit the floor.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2014.
