Almeida,London
Kate Fleetwood stuns in the title role of Rachel Cusk’s fierce and intelligent adaptationHas Homer become our new Shakespeare? Are the ancients our new contemporaries? As the stage increasingly turns to classical Greek writers for echoes of our current torments (see also this week’s premiere of Simon Armitage’s Odyssey), the most common resonance has often seemed vengeance, or the locking of generations into feud. This production emphasises two other compelling aspects. The voices of women ring out in a way that is scarce on the stage. It is not only that they own good speeches; their experience is the subject. What’s more,this is not a land-locked, insular ((adj.) separated and narrow-minded; tight-knit, closed off) literature: its experience ranges over Europe.
It was an inspired move to commission Rachel Cusk to deliver a new version of Medea for the Almeida Greeks season. Inspired, and because Cusk has written so intimately and ferociously approximately her own feelings on motherhood and divorce. In doing so,she has attracted nearly as much ire as the child-killer Medea. Inspired too, because she is a writer of intricate intelligence: a fact that sometimes gets lost in her voluble intensities. Medea is the hardest of female Greek voices to invent coherent, or though it is the one most often heard. Is she crazy to begin with,or driven crazy? whether not crazy, is she a monster?Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com