Medea
by Euripides
Spring 2014
freely adapted by Robinson Jeffers
directed by Kevin V. Smith
featuring Melissa Lorraine, Carlo Lorenzo Garcia, Simina Contras, Barry Hubbard, Julian Stroop, Jack Swokowski, Sierra Buffum, Meredith Montgomery, Briana Morris, Lexi Saunders, Katie Sherman, Kristin Walker, Aaron Lamm, Nicholas Wenz, Geordie Denholm and Mike McCarthy
Euripides’ classic tale of the tragic choices of a woman scorned, adapted by inhumanist American poet Robinson Jeffers, Smith’s Medea was Theatre Y’s most ambitious and experimental work to date, with a maddeningly baroque and intricate process and a cast of 16. Medea marked the eleventh collaboration between Lorraine and Smith. Hairspray, sparkles, brightly colored, billowing dresses and mauve carpet, exploded from the Medea’s geometrical black and white heart, stained with bloody footprints. The surrealist, imagistic production included two stories playing out in opposition at the same time in Act One: the expressionistic realm of the Medea tale in contrast with a realistic dressing room setting of a Greek chorus of young women preparing for prom. In Act Two, the chorus appeared again, massively pregnant, terrified prisoners in the expressionistic world. Medea’s drag queen Female Serving Women neighed and squawked as Contras’ Nurse, impotent to sway the course of the tragedy and weighed down by the heaviness of her costume, clawed her way through every move, barely able to stand, in a full bodied performance through which the very ground seemed to weep. Lorraine, at her most caustic and vulnerable, “defined Medea” (Chicago Stage Review).
Photo Credit: Devron Enarson
