{"id":969,"date":"2014-09-04T16:15:32","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T15:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=969"},"modified":"2014-09-04T16:15:32","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T15:15:32","slug":"universal-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2014\/09\/universal-mother.html","title":{"rendered":"Universal mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Medea<\/a><\/p>\n

Medea<\/em><\/a> is back, and it grips like a mastiff. No ancient tragedy feels more modern, despite its extremity: maternal infanticide and divine reclamation. NT Live <\/a>sends its tightly-wound new production into cinemas this evening.<\/p>\n

How to account for a classic that clings? On the Paris Review <\/a>website recently, Joseph Luzzi contrasted the currency of two 19th century Italian novels: Manzoni\u2019s The Betrothed<\/em>, once hailed as an imperishable epic, and Collodi\u2019s Pinocchio,<\/em> a children\u2019s book that is still read and studied far beyond Italy. He suggests that Manzoni\u2019s Christian determinism has worn less well than Pinocchio\u2019s fraught journey through childhood, a journey which we all attempt, and which gives it greater universality. \u2018The classic that keeps on being read,\u2019 he argues, \u2018is the book whose situations and themes remain relevant over time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Well, kinda. Sure, we all trudge towards adulthood, with varying degrees of success; but it is only in recent decades that children\u2019s fiction has achieved cultural respectability: scholarly editions, curriculum status, adult acceptability. Childhood and its discontents is a territory of such increasing social and cultural anxiety that fictional works which address the subject have an added charge. Alongside, adults read children\u2019s books without shame (thank you, JK Rowling): commerce and culture are making out. Pinocchio<\/em> is still read not because it is universal, but because it is universal enough for this moment. That moment may end, or perhaps mutate.<\/p>\n

Luzzi is more convincing when he talks, rather beautifully, of works that \u2018read us as much as we read them, by revealing what is most important to our lives individually and our age collectively.\u2019 A classic with currency takes a long hard look at its reader or spectator and finds dread and desire it can work with.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The chorus in Medea Photo: Richard Hubert Smith<\/p><\/div>\n

How universal is Medea?<\/em> It probably depends on your universe. Carrie Cracknell\u2019s production certainly has a feverish power \u2013 I sat in the second row on the edge of a panic attack, my chest tight, my breathing shallow. Movement director Lucy Guerin must take the credit for this jiggling unease: Helen McCrory and her chorus (a watchful throng in print frocks, ladies out of Pina Bausch and Katie Mitchell) move with tremors, shudders, thrumming discomfort, sending waves of palpitating reaction into the audience. Wonderfully designed by Tom Scutt, the set defines three different spaces \u2013 the swank wedding receotion, Medea\u2019s not-smart apartment, the nightmare woods beyond \u2013 into all of which atrocity gradually seeps.<\/p>\n

Medea\u2019s particular anguish isn\u2019t mine. I\u2019m not a parent in extremis or an exile waiting to happen. Though who doesn\u2019t often feel a bereft, panicky alienation, a bleary distress at a world without signposts? Or wonder what makes proper parenting, proper love, a sense of the foreign or of home?<\/p>\n

\"Fiona<\/a>

Fiona Shaw as Medea Photo: Neil Libbert\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

These aren\u2019t concerns of all time, all place. The only other Medea to leave a lasting impression on me was Fiona Shaw \u2013 like McCrory, a figure of desperate wit, but also a victim of the affluent having-it-all years, turning her Sabbatier comedy upon herself. McCrory is buzzsaw sardonic. She furiously keeps defying our grasp: you may gaze into the actor\u2019s huge, mascara-smeared eyes but not read her thoughts, because she imagines the barely imaginable. With her director, McCrory doesn\u2019t frame the character for sympathy, or understanding. She reclaims Medea\u2019s dark places, the den she scrabbled into, ever deeper, until she doesn\u2019t, can\u2019t, emerge. That harsh particularity, in an age of over-sharing, may be the most compulsive aspect of an immense performance.<\/p>\n

What did the original Athenian audience \u2013 mostly male, mostly privileged \u2013 make of Medea?<\/em> Did they see their deepest terrors, or feel a secret thrill as the house crashed down about their ears? Did they see loss or possibility? Do we? Medea thrills us even as she scares us, and perhaps that\u2019s her \u2018universal\u2019 challenge. Can we go where she goes? Should we even try?<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medea is back, and it grips like a mastiff. No ancient tragedy feels more modern, despite its extremity: maternal infanticide and divine reclamation. NT Live sends its tightly-wound new production into cinemas this evening. How to account for a classic that clings? On the Paris Review website recently, Joseph Luzzi contrasted the currency of two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[99,34,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-medea","9":"tag-theatre","10":"tag-tragedy","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}