Medea, National Theatre - theatre review: 'Helen McCrory is on exceptional form'

Helen McCrory triumphs as a murderous Medea with a modern touch
Deadly passion: Helen McCrory as killer Medea ©Alastair Muir
Henry Hitchings5 September 2014

Helen McCrory is on exceptional form as Medea, the most disturbing of Greek tragic heroines. The character tends to be portrayed as a she-devil, a murderous manipulator who’s wild with love and rage.

McCrory powerfully conveys Medea’s bitter destructiveness, while also suggesting the vulnerability of a woman shunned by a society where she’s seen as a cunning foreigner.

Euripides’ play, almost 2,500 years old, is clear-cut and intense — a piercing, painful vision of passion and betrayal. It is giving nothing away to say that Medea kills her own children after being spurned by their father Jason, who has married another woman. Even if you don’t know the plot, its trajectory is obvious from early on, and Carrie Cracknell’s production is pacy and direct.

Curtain call: Helen McCrory after her performance as Medea (Picture: Dave Benett)

Its textures are a mix of ancient and modern. Though it reverberates with a sense of Greek ritual, there’s an acute feeling of up-to-dateness. This Medea at first looks like she’s just emerged from a yoga class in Primrose Hill, before surprising us by smoking like a slightly gauche student and later dressing in floaty white trousers.There’s the same quality of wispy elegance in some of the music, by Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp. But as the plot darkens, the score pulses with malevolent intent and builds to snarling intensity.

It’s here, as Medea contemplates infanticide, that the soundscape most successfully meshes with Lucy Guerin’s choreography. The 13 members of the chorus are a creeping, insidious presence throughout. Their gestures articulate Medea’s connection to a dark realm of irrational impulses as her drama reaches its horrifying peak. Ben Power’s lean new version of Euripides’ text has moments of bracing clarity, but at times its simple language is banal rather than bruising.

Dominic Rowan is under-used as the Athenian king Aegeus, and his key scene with Medea is blandly written. There’s much crisper material for Jason (Danny Sapani), who starts as an arrogant thug before exploding into howls of grief. But it’s McCrory’s performance that makes the production satisfyingly muscular. She captures Medea’s animal savagery and the agony of being transfixed by her own grim destiny.

Until September 4 (020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk)

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