This sharp modern take on Euripides’s Medea is the work of Rachel Cusk, a writer perhaps best known for her unsparingly candid memoirs. Aftermath, her account of her divorce, is saturated with references to Greek tragedy, so she seems an inspired choice to update this story of marital discord and bloody revenge. But she’s also a risky one — with no track record of writing for the stage.
Cusk has relocated the play from ancient Corinth to an uncomfortably familiar world, in which the chorus consists of aspirational mums who prattle about property prices and almond croissants. Medea is re-defined as a writer, spurned by her husband Jason in favour of (quite literally) a younger model. He’s a smug and deeply dislikable actor, expertly played by Justin Salinger, and Medea’s response to his betrayal is fiercely pragmatic.
Kate Fleetwood brings a chilling intensity to the title role. She can be icy, frantic or contemptuous, and relishes Cusk’s lines, which switch between aching poetry and an acidic matter-of-factness. The play is essentially a series of conversations, and Fleetwood’s Medea is a startlingly articulate social critic.
Director Rupert Goold ensures the key arguments between Medea and Jason are rivetingly nasty. We see their children messily taking sides, and Cusk’s Medea doesn’t follow Euripides’s original story by murdering them, but instead abandons them — which seems almost as shocking. The play ends in a strange and unsatisfactory fashion, dominated by Charlotte Randle’s Messenger, extraordinary yet also incongruous as she reels off rhyming couplets.
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But even if the writing is often more thought-provoking than moving, it’s genuinely fresh. Cusk has savage things to say about marriage, parenthood and the corrosive effects of the midlife crisis, as a fitting end to the Almeida’s season of Greek drama.
Until Nov 14, The Almeida (020 7359 4404, almeida.co.uk)
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