Theatre Review: Headlong's Medea (Richmond, & touring)

There’s just one very good reason to see Headlong’s Medea, which updates and relocates Euripides’s tragedy to contemporary England. It’s not Ruari Murchison’s set design – clever though it is – which places the characters variously inside and outside an archetypal two-storey suburban home that opens and shuts like a large doll’s house. And it’s certainly not Mike Bartlett’s text, by far the weakest element of the enterprise. The reason to see the show is, simply, Rachael Stirling, blazing and brilliant in a great performance that overrides some – though, alas, not all – of the problematic elements of the production.

Red-haired here and by turns husky, harsh and velvet-voiced, Stirling’s Medea dominates – as every good Medea surely should – from her first appearance, with Stirling’s vocal resemblance to her mother Diana Rigg (who of course played the role to great acclaim in the early 1990s) adding another layer to the performance. Bartlett, who also directs the production, makes the character palpably an “outsider” figure in her community, a woman who’s about to be evicted from the house she shared with her husband Jason (Adam Levy), the latter having left her for their landlord’s daughter, Kate, who he’s going to marry. This event has made the couple’s son Tom mute and sent Medea herself into a black depression that’s interspersed with tirades against her errant ex and against a woman’s lot in general.

By turns proud and paranoid, bitter and desperate, Stirling “kills” in the role. But if only every element in Barlett’s production were as strong. It’s not so much the modernising that’s the problem – indeed, it could be argued that Bartlett hasn’t been as radical as he might have been in his adaptation of the text – but simply that the writing isn’t adequate to the task at hand. Complete with references to Strictly Come Dancing and Richard Curtis flicks, the dialogue is sub-soap opera standard for the most part, but there are occasional lurches into a more heightened mode. Medea reminds Jason about saving him from “the Grecian sea” and pauses at one moment to muse: “Is everything preordained? Do you believe in fate?” These jarring juxtapositions mean that the production struggles to find a suitable tone. For the most part, it’s more comic than tragic, and the OTT final moments simply haven’t earned the emotion that they evidently seek to incite.

There’s the odd effective episode, notably a touching late scene between Medea and her ever-silent son, but a couple of moments feel like indulgences (a painful cookery scene scored to Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane,” for one). Overall, the familiarity of the context tends to dampen rather than accentuate the tragic dimension of the piece, and, for all its contemporary allusions, Bartlett’s adaptation gives startlingly little insight into what might motivate an infanticide.

Since Medea is provided with an escape route – courtesy of a kindly neighbour (Paul Shelley, the only cast member to give a performance that’s a match for Stirling’s) – it might have been more effective if Bartlett had not had his heroine wreak vengeance – or at least not in the unconvincing manner in which it happens here – thereby subverting our expectations and providing this Medea with a different fate. It’s a tactic that may have proved more in keeping with the overall tone of the production, for as it stands this Headlong plunge into Greek Tragedy proves a disappointment, albeit one that’s just about worth seeing for Stirling’s commanding work.

At Richmond Theatre until 24th November. Further information at Headlong's website.

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.

Review of 2010: Theatre - 10 Favourite Productions

While no single production stood out for me this year, 2010 certainly offered some incredible theatre experiences, of which the ten below - presented in order of viewing rather than preference - were among the ones that I enjoyed most. No new plays on the list, I’m sorry to note; again, this will hopefully be remedied in 2011. Click on the titles for full reviews of the productions.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Rose Theatre, Kingston)

In a year that saw some highly eccentric (though often exhilarating) takes on Shakespeare, it’s pleasing to recall Peter Hall’s marvellous traditional production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Rose Theatre. Full of fun and feeling, the production was elegantly designed, finely detailed and well-cast across the board, with particularly good work from Rachael Stirling, who brought a wondrous grandeur and intensity to Helena’s unrequited love for Demetrius. But, inevitably, the star of this particular show was Judi Dench whose Titania (via Elizabeth I!) was variously ethereal and earthy, and never more cherishable than when hee-hawing with delight at Oliver Chris’s adorably transmogrified Bottom.

Waiting For Godot (Theatre Royal Haymarket)

“Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon, my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot …” Somehow I never thought I’d shed tears during a Samuel Beckett play but Roger Rees’s delivery of Vladimir’s great late monologue moved me deeply, and exemplified the ways in which Sean Mathias’s brilliant production excavated the play’s tender, human heart.

London Assurance (National Theatre, Olivier)

Pitched somewhere between Restoration comedy and Whitehall farce, the National Theatre’s exuberant and utterly charming revival of Dion Boucicault’s 1841 comedy became something of a phenomenon. With deliciously florid, full-on star performances from Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw, and great supporting turns from Richard Briers, Nick Sampson and Michelle Terry, Nicholas Hytner’s production gave pure pleasure from beginning to end, and I could happily watch it again tonight.

Women Beware Women (National Theatre, Olivier)

Marianne Elliot’s lavish staging of Middleton’s revenge tragedy had as many questionable ideas as good ones, and the elaborate (yet limp) staging of the final massacre was a silly and sad mistake. But at its best the production gripped like a motherfucker. It earns its place on this list due to the thrilling staging of the famed scene in which the fiendish Livia (Harriet Walter) distracts the Widow (Tilly Tremayne) with a game of chess so that the rape of the latter’s daughter-in-law can be accomplished. At such moments, Elliot’s production clearly had Middleton’s witty, warped vision entirely in its grasp.

Avenue Q (Wyndhams Theatre)

Thanks to the venerable Mr. Ian Foster at There Ought To Be Clowns whose great review persuaded me to experience the delights of this hilarious, adorable and insightful musical at long last.

The Thunderbolt (Orange Tree Theatre)

The best production that I saw at the Orange Tree Theatre this year, Sam Walters’s droll and very moving revival of Pinero’s play.

Hamlet (National Theatre, Olivier)

TV crews, security cameras, suited security guards with ear-pieces - I winced at the beginning of the NT’s Hamlet, and imagined that I was in for a miserable time. But by the end Hytner’s production had won me over entirely, and provided yet more reasons to love the Greatest Play Ever Written, not least Rory Kinnear, giving great Dane. 

Broken Glass (Tricycle Theatre)

Enticing me over to the Tricycle Theatre for the first (but definitely not the last!) time, Iqbal Khan’s stunning revival of Arthur Miller’s 1994 opus about the fall-out of Kristallnacht and its effect on a Jewish couple in Brooklyn ended up being perhaps my favourite production of the year. The extent to which Miller succeeds in linking what he calls “a public concern and a private neurosis” in Broken Glass is debatable. But the play’s flaws didn’t seem to matter very much, not with performances of this calibre: Antony Sher, Lucy Cohu, Nigel Lindsay, Madeline Potter and Emily Bruni were simply superb. Khan’s production was gripping, intense, haunting and beautiful; what a shame that it didn’t manage to transfer.

The Glass Menagerie (Young Vic)

While it didn't quite match Rupert Goold's immaculate 2007 production, great performances from Deborah Findlay, Leo Bill, Sinéad Matthews and Kyle Soller distinguished Joe Hill-Gibbons’s thoroughly involving revival of Tennessee Williams’s classic.

Richard III (Propeller; Yvonne Arnaud Theatre)

Combining vaudeville and Latin Mass, carols and rap, puppetry and torture porn, Ed Hall’s all-male Propeller company re-imagine Shakespeare’s most notorious history play as some gonzo Victorian medical drama. Chilling, funny and frequently barking mad, the production dug out the play’s political seriousness and its ghoulish comedy to produce as exciting and inventive a staging as I can ever imagine having the privilege to see.

And finally, a shout-out to those actors, writers and directors whose talks and Masterclasses have offered so much insight and inspiration throughout the year, in particular Fiona Shaw, Simon Russell Beale, Lesley Sharp, Miriam Margolyes, Deborah Findlay, Simon Callow, Willy Russell, and Judi Dench.