![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraThis is the story of Medea's children - two, in this version, Leon and Jasper (Aedan Burmester, aged 12, and Quinn Bevan, 10 - there are two other children playing the parts on alternate nights). They have been shut in their (modern) bedroom while Jason and Medea argue; Medea comes to visit them several times throughout the evening, as events proceed and the final tragedy approaches.
The child actors were incredibly good. I've seen excellent child actors in film, but I haven't seen a play with such major parts for children - they are on stage for the whole 70 minutes. I thought Quinn was particularly good - there's a bit where he's been describing all the fun he's going to have in the mansion where he'll be living with his father and his new wife, and then he says to his mother that obviously she'll be invited over for dinner every night, so he can sit next to her. It was touchingly believable and heart-breaking.
As with any Greek tragedy, there's a lot of death. The play starts with the boys faking their deaths, face-down in pillows, before leaping up to continue fighting with Nerf guns and stuffed animals, and they play an animal naming game (name an animal starting with the last letter of the previously named one) that keeps being diverted by discussions about the allowability of extinct or imaginary animals, and how important it is to have been alive. Against that are the moments of sibling bonding; Leon cleaning Jasper up, wordlessly, when he accidentally wets himself, and then awarding him a star that Jasper adds to the wall before they turn out all the lights and their bedroom becomes a galaxy of glow in the dark stars, with the two boys drifting in it together (and singing David Bowie's "Starman").
It is, however, a play that only makes sense if you know the backstory. When Medea gets the children to make a card for "Dad's friend" that will go with the chemical-smelling present that she's already neatly wrapped, it's a horrible moment because I know what's happening next, and that it means a decision she can't walk back from. In this play, I'm less sure when Medea makes her decision. The ending is touching, and sad, and horrifying, but it's not cathartic - the boys don't challenge Medea, and so in the end it becomes her story again, rather than theirs. The programme says the ending was changed shortly before the original season opened, and I'd be fascinated to know what they tried. I think the play gets a lot of power from presenting the children as innocents, but it also loses something as well.
The child actors were incredibly good. I've seen excellent child actors in film, but I haven't seen a play with such major parts for children - they are on stage for the whole 70 minutes. I thought Quinn was particularly good - there's a bit where he's been describing all the fun he's going to have in the mansion where he'll be living with his father and his new wife, and then he says to his mother that obviously she'll be invited over for dinner every night, so he can sit next to her. It was touchingly believable and heart-breaking.
As with any Greek tragedy, there's a lot of death. The play starts with the boys faking their deaths, face-down in pillows, before leaping up to continue fighting with Nerf guns and stuffed animals, and they play an animal naming game (name an animal starting with the last letter of the previously named one) that keeps being diverted by discussions about the allowability of extinct or imaginary animals, and how important it is to have been alive. Against that are the moments of sibling bonding; Leon cleaning Jasper up, wordlessly, when he accidentally wets himself, and then awarding him a star that Jasper adds to the wall before they turn out all the lights and their bedroom becomes a galaxy of glow in the dark stars, with the two boys drifting in it together (and singing David Bowie's "Starman").
It is, however, a play that only makes sense if you know the backstory. When Medea gets the children to make a card for "Dad's friend" that will go with the chemical-smelling present that she's already neatly wrapped, it's a horrible moment because I know what's happening next, and that it means a decision she can't walk back from. In this play, I'm less sure when Medea makes her decision. The ending is touching, and sad, and horrifying, but it's not cathartic - the boys don't challenge Medea, and so in the end it becomes her story again, rather than theirs. The programme says the ending was changed shortly before the original season opened, and I'd be fascinated to know what they tried. I think the play gets a lot of power from presenting the children as innocents, but it also loses something as well.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-07 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-08 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-08 01:16 pm (UTC)