About
the Play:
Medea deals with murder,
infidelity and revenge. Euripides' classic Greek
tragedy, about the woman who murders her own children in revenge for
her husband's infidelity, has been beautifully updated with a
distinctive feminist flavour by the Scottish poet and playwright Liz
Lochhead.
Medea is a play that
centers on the controversial roles of males and females and how
revenge can torment one's soul. It tells the story of Jason
and Medea, refugees in Corinth, Greece, who cling together as they
struggle to bring up their children in an alien and unsympathetic
society. Jason forms a plan to better integrate himself which
involves abandoning his wife and the mother of his children, in
favour of Glauke, the daughter of Kreon, King of Corinth. Fearing
that she plans revenge, Kreon banishes Medea. However, he grants her
one more day of freedom, in the course of which Medea poisons Glauke
and goes on to murder the two children she has had with Jason. Medea
although written many centuries ago, presents potent themes that are
relevant to the 21st century.
Liz Lochhead's adaptive
translation of Medea was
commissioned and first performed by Theatre Babel at The Old
Fruitmarket, Glasgow, in 2000. The production went on to tour
nationally, as well as visiting the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in both
2000 and 2001, where it played to critical and audience acclaim. It was taken abroad and played in Toronto in 2002 at the Premiere Dance Theatre. This
edition of the play was awarded the Saltire Society Scottish Book of
the Year Award in 2001.
Cast: 3 female, 3 male
What people say:
"The Scottish poet and
playwright Liz Lochhead has taken liberties
with Euripides, turning this harrowing Greek
tragedy into a thoroughly modern feminist text ... Lochhead's
colloquial, witty yet often powerfully poetic new version manages the
tricky task of honouring her ancient Greek source while turning Medea
into a distinctively Scottish play for the 21st century. It is one of
the most exciting and gripping productions of a Greek tragedy I have
ever seen." — The Daily Telegraph
(London)
"Lochhead's
searing adaptation of Medea ...
should firmly establish the Glasgow playwright as
Scotland's greatest living dramatist… the finest piece I have seen
on the Scottish stage this year." — Scotland on
Sunday
"Liz Lochhead's
stunning new version of Medea is the kind of
interpretation – brave, visionary, risky – that blows a
well-known text apart and reassembles it in a completely new light …
What Lochhead does is to recast Medea as an
episode – ancient but new, cosmic yet agonizingly familiar – in a
sex war which is recognizable to every woman, and most of the men, in
the theatre." — The Scotsman
"Some of the most exciting
recent work on Greek drama in the English language." —
Sunday Times
"Who
would have thought that the grisly, vengeful tale of Medea
could contain so much humour?" — NOW Magazine
(Toronto)
About the Playwright:
Liz Lochhead is one of Scotland's leading writers and
broadcasters, perhaps best-known for Scottish theatre works including
her adaptation of Euripides' classic Medea
and Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off. Her writing is
renowned for its use of contemporary Scots, infusing her work with
the energy, wit and rhythm of the language. She was made Poet
Laureate of Glasgow from 2005 and 2011, the Makar, or National Poet
of Scotland, from 2011 and 2016, and awarded the Queen's Gold Medal
for Poetry in 2015.
Euripides was one of the
three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being
Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five
plays to him, of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have
profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the
representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in
extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer
developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are
characteristic of romance.