Medea is a classic play by the Greek dramatist Euripides who flourished at the same time as Sophocles (who wrote Antigone) and Aeschylus during the golden age of Greek drama.
Medea has an enormously challenging story line with a great deal of back story. When Jason led his Argonauts into the Black Sea to find the Golden Fleece he went to Colchis (in modern Georgia) where King Aeetes ruled; the King offered him the fleece providing he could perform certain tasks; Medea the King's daughter fell in love with him and used her magical powers to help him succeed. When Jason fled Colchis with the fleece Medea went with him, killing her brother and dismembering him and throwing the bits of body into the sea so that the pursuing king would stop to pick them up and Jason could escape.
Nasty.
Then, when they stopped at Mount Pelion, she persuaded the daughters of pelias to chop their father up by telling them that this was the way to make him better of his illness.
Nasty.
With Jason she had children. But he, being a typical man, decided when they went to Corinth, that he should marry the King's daughter (he had a predilection for princesses) Glauce.
That's all back story!
The story starts as King Creon, father to Glauce, comes to Medea to tell her she must go into exile because he is afraid that she will use her witchcraft to seek revenge on himself, Jason and Glauce. But she begs for a single day to organise herself which he, reluctantly and against his better judgement, grants.
The King of Athens passes by and Medea persuades him to give her unconditional asylum in Athens.
Jason arrives. He is a little shame-faced but defiant: "It is fair enough that one of your sex, a woman, should fly into a passion with a husband who traffics in contraband love." Then he tells her to "grow up". Medea's problem, in Jason's eyes, is that she can't have sex with him any more. "when your sex life is going well, you think that you have everything, but then, if something goes wrong with regard to your bed, you consider the best and happiest circumstances utterly repugnant." He's moved on, why can't she?
She sends her children with gifts to his new wife, Glauce; the gifts are booby trapped and Glauce dies, as does Creon, trying to save her. The Messenger who conveys the news reflects that "man's life is merely a shadow". Jason rushes to Medea's house, cursing her as an "artist in obscenity" but she appears in the sky in a chariot drawn by dragons with the bodies of his sons, the gift-bearers, whom she herself has killed rather than letting them fall into the hands of the authorities.
It is difficult to see how this play, much of it chanted, with a chorus of Corinthian women who, early in the play, promise Medea that they won't interfere, could possibly appeal to a modern audience. The motivations of the characters are too obscure. Nevertheless, the play has survived for two and a half millennia and it is still performed.
October 2016; 38 pages
Showing posts with label greek drama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greek drama. Show all posts
Monday, 24 October 2016
Sunday, 28 February 2016
"Antigone" by Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles
I saw Antigone at the Hope Theatre in Islington on Saturday 5th March.
It was beautifully played by a five woman cast in the round in a tiny, blackened cube of a room with an audience of perhaps 30 so close to the performance area that I worried about tripping the actors with my feet.
They started with one of the actresses reading from a book: "everyone knows that story"; they then gave a minute-long retelling of the Oedipus story so that we would know the background to this tale. Sophocles, of course, would never have needed to do this. Then the action started.
A feature of particular brilliance was that the chorus was played by the cast chanting a capella. This sung accompaniment to the main action made the chorus a key addition to the play.
But the actresses themselves were wonderful and the translation (which bore so many points of resemblace to the one I had read, below) was rendered into realistic dialogue. The Sentry who rushes in grumbling that he didn't really want to come and tell this dreadful news, don't shoot the messenger, and going all around the bushes to avoid telling the terrible tale was sharply told by King Creon to get to the point. These five actors made the play come alive as a very real contemporary dilemma: obey your conscience or obey the law. It really didn't matter that they talked about the gods. This adaptation was faithful to the original play and was still exceptionally relevant to day.
Antigone is the third of Sophocles' Theban plays, though, I am told, the first to be written. Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus who famously killed his father and married his mother. But Antigone has fresh troubles. Her brothers, ruling turn and turn about as Kings of Thebes, have fought and killed one another. The new King, Creon, uncle to Antigone and father of her fiancé Haemon, has declared that one brother shall be buried with full honours while the other, the traitor, shall be left for the dogs and carrion birds. Antigone decides to bury the unburied brother in defiance of the law.
Creon is busy being King when a Sentry rushes in and unwillingly tells Creon that the body has been buried. Creon assumes (as the sentry thought he might in a 'don't shoot the messenger' moment) that the sentry or his mates committed the crime and tells the sentry that he will be killed if he can't produce the culprit. So the sentry decides to run off. But then he returns, having caught Antigone in the act of reburying her borther after the sentry and his mates had dug him up again. So Creon condemns the unrepentant Antigone to be walled up, presumably to starve to death.
And the chorus quote a saying: "Sooner or later/ foul is fair, fair is foul/ to the man the gods will ruin." Is that where Macbeth got it from?
Haemon comes along and Creon asks Haemon about the judgement and Haemon, in a wonderful piece of rhetoric, says that of course he honours his father and anything his father does must be right but the people of the twon are rather shocked by Creon's judgement. Creon and Haemon end up trading insults. Brilliant.
Then the famous blind seer Tiresias comes along and prophesies that Creon is going to regret his action ...
A classic. March 2016; 58 pages
It was beautifully played by a five woman cast in the round in a tiny, blackened cube of a room with an audience of perhaps 30 so close to the performance area that I worried about tripping the actors with my feet.
They started with one of the actresses reading from a book: "everyone knows that story"; they then gave a minute-long retelling of the Oedipus story so that we would know the background to this tale. Sophocles, of course, would never have needed to do this. Then the action started.
A feature of particular brilliance was that the chorus was played by the cast chanting a capella. This sung accompaniment to the main action made the chorus a key addition to the play.
But the actresses themselves were wonderful and the translation (which bore so many points of resemblace to the one I had read, below) was rendered into realistic dialogue. The Sentry who rushes in grumbling that he didn't really want to come and tell this dreadful news, don't shoot the messenger, and going all around the bushes to avoid telling the terrible tale was sharply told by King Creon to get to the point. These five actors made the play come alive as a very real contemporary dilemma: obey your conscience or obey the law. It really didn't matter that they talked about the gods. This adaptation was faithful to the original play and was still exceptionally relevant to day.
Antigone is the third of Sophocles' Theban plays, though, I am told, the first to be written. Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus who famously killed his father and married his mother. But Antigone has fresh troubles. Her brothers, ruling turn and turn about as Kings of Thebes, have fought and killed one another. The new King, Creon, uncle to Antigone and father of her fiancé Haemon, has declared that one brother shall be buried with full honours while the other, the traitor, shall be left for the dogs and carrion birds. Antigone decides to bury the unburied brother in defiance of the law.
Creon is busy being King when a Sentry rushes in and unwillingly tells Creon that the body has been buried. Creon assumes (as the sentry thought he might in a 'don't shoot the messenger' moment) that the sentry or his mates committed the crime and tells the sentry that he will be killed if he can't produce the culprit. So the sentry decides to run off. But then he returns, having caught Antigone in the act of reburying her borther after the sentry and his mates had dug him up again. So Creon condemns the unrepentant Antigone to be walled up, presumably to starve to death.
And the chorus quote a saying: "Sooner or later/ foul is fair, fair is foul/ to the man the gods will ruin." Is that where Macbeth got it from?
Haemon comes along and Creon asks Haemon about the judgement and Haemon, in a wonderful piece of rhetoric, says that of course he honours his father and anything his father does must be right but the people of the twon are rather shocked by Creon's judgement. Creon and Haemon end up trading insults. Brilliant.
Then the famous blind seer Tiresias comes along and prophesies that Creon is going to regret his action ...
A classic. March 2016; 58 pages
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