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Torn Between Two Minds
by Michael Bettencourt
Medea and its Double reviewed January 7, 2010
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| Medea the Mother (See-Yeon Koo, in white) comforts Medea the Lover (Kyoung Lee, in red). |
| Photo Credit:Zita Bradley |
| In Medea and Its Double, director Hyoung-Taek Limb uses the version of Medea by the Greek playwright Euripides to explore the passion that drove Medea to kill King Creon, his daughter Glauce, and her own two children as an act of revenge against the infidelity of her husband, Jason.
Mr. Limb does this by "splitting" the title character into two Medeas onstage, one dubbed "Medea as mother" and the other as "Medea as lover" (played by See-Yeon Koo and Kyoung Lee, respectively). Their struggle, both literal and metaphoric, over whether life should be preserved or blood spilt in anger comprises the moral and emotional center of the play.
The decade-old Seoul Factory for the Performing Arts (SFPA), which performs Medea and Its Double, was founded by Mr. Limb, who also acts as its artistic director. SFPA grounds its actor training in what Mr. Limb calls techniques of "physical contact," based on Anne Bogart's Viewpoints and the work of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski. He also employs Korean mask dances, martial arts, and the vocal training of the traditional one-person opera called "pansori" as well as practices drawn from the Beijing Opera and the Indian Odissi tradition of classic theater.
The result of this training and theatrical approach is always striking and at times stunning. The staging for Medea and Its Double is simple yet evocative. Two off-set scrim panels, painted in swoops of red and black (like splashed blood) sit upstage and allow for entrances and exits. The company, at times seated behind the scrim panels, are lit as they chant and provide acoustic sound effects, and two singers/instrumentalists (Min-Jung Kim and Yeon-Ju Cho) remain there for the duration of the play, providing vocal and musical underscoring and commentary.
The playing area is entirely white except for two wings of red running from upstage center to stage right and left, where they border two shallow 2' x 8' troughs of water with lit floating candles. The supple lighting (by Tae-Jin Chung) supplies the visual complement to the physical stage action, at times highlighting, at times hiding, at times nuancing the characters' emotions.
Mr. Limb begins the story with the childhood of Jason (Do-Yup Lee) and Medea as they join their friends in playing childhood games (all enacted with great exuberance by Su-Yeon Lee, Kyu-Hwa Choi, and Da-Il Lee). Gradually, as they grow older, they grow closer, their budding intimacy expressed in a sensual dance done with a red ribbon that binds them together with a kind of savage closeness.
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| Medea torn between two minds as a mother (See-Yeon Koo, in white) and a lover (Kyoung Lee, in red). |
| Photo Credit:Zita Bradley |
| The birth of their two children (represented throughout the play by two dolls manipulated by two actors) comes with a blast of white light and a scream of pain, and for a while, both Medea and Jason are happy with their family life.
But Jason betrays this life by agreeing to marry Glauce, the daughter of King Creon (of Corinth, not of Thebes, as in Antigone), ostensibly so that he can protect Medea and the children (Medea, after all, is not Greek but a barbarian, an outsider, and thus in need of defense), but in reality because he is seduced by the offer of gold and power. Jason expresses this corruption in the simplest of ways: when he enters Medea's presence, dressed in rich robes, he carries an elegant parasol which he sets down carefully and then kisses -- the kiss he never gives to Medea.
It is at this point that Medea fractures, and the Mother struggles to stem the growing rage of the murder-minded Lover. This struggle is played out in many ways on the stage, all physically grounded, all visually sharp and moving. But the Mother finally loses the battle, and the staging of the children's murder is the first of the two most poignant moments in the play. Represented by two red-paper cut-outs, the Lover deliberately tears them to shreds and showers the pieces across the playing area.
At this point, the battle lost, the Mother and the Lover come to terms with each other in order to soothe the pain of the loss and forge a way forward, shown by the second poignant moment, the children's funeral: Medea carries a white casket shaped like a bassinet from upstage to downstage as she literally uses her body to slice in half a panel of white cloth, breaking apart the old order so that it can be mended.
The play ends with the return of the childhood song sung at the beginning of the play, and the extinguishing of the candles floating on the water.
All in all, Medea and Its Double delivers an excellent evening of theater, full of carefully meshed pageantry and pathos, performed by actors secure in their skills and directed by a man with a clear sense of how to use the stage to tell a compelling and tragic story.
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La MaMa (First Floor Theater)
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Category: Drama
Written by: Euripides
Directed by: Hyoung-Taek Limb
Produced by: Seoul Factory for the Performing Arts
Opened: January 7, 2010
Closed: January 24, 2010
Running Time: 65 minutes
Theater: La MaMa (First Floor Theater)
Address: 74A E. 4th Street
New York, NY 10003
Yahoo! Maps Directions
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Tickets: $18.00
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Creative Team
Written by: Euripides
Adapted and Directed by: Hyoung-Taek Limb
Produced by: Seoul Factory for the Performing Arts
Light Designer: Tae-Jin Chung
Sound Engineer: Takaaki Ando
Cast
Medea as Lover: Kyoung Lee
Medea as Mother: See-Yeon Koo
Jason: Do-Yup Lee
Nanny/Clown: Su-Yeon Lee
Aegeus/Tutor/Clown: Kyu-Hwa Choi
Creon/Clown: Da-Il Lee
Singer: Min-Jung Kim
Singer: Yeon-Ju Cho
Crew
Production Manager: Soo-Mi You
Technical Director: Hyokki Chung
Stage Manager: Min-Ho Park
Assistant Stage Manager: Eunah Kwon
Assistant Director: Min-Ho Park
Overseas Program Manager: Eunmi Hwang
Company Manager: Jackie Chang
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