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Helen McCrory: A Drama Queen Slays Them with Her Greek Turn

On August 17, 2014April 15, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

As a child she sliced a beehive in half with a machete; now the feisty actress is wowing theatre-goers with her gory portrayal of the murderous matriarch Medea

August 17, 2014 | The Sunday Times

04 April 2011 – Helen McCrory attends the grand opening of Harry Potter: The Exhibition on April 4, 2011, at the Discovery Times Square Exposition Center, in New York, NY.

Tickets for Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet may have sold out in record time last week, but Helen McCrory’s Medea is the theatrical event of the moment. Avid theatre-goers who take in both may find the Shakespeare a little pale after McCrory’s “stunning” performance in Euripides’s blood-soaked tale of a woman who wreaks revenge on her faithless husband by killing their children. “It’s the reverse of Hamlet because he spends three hours worrying and does nothing, whereas Medea takes an hour and 15, massacres the whole f****** stage and walks off,” McCrory said before the production opened. “But it’s great because she uses every shred of femininity that she has to do it and she also has the complexity of guilt.”

McCrory added that Medea was “one of the greatest parts you’ll ever play” and the critics seem united in lauding this as her own best performance. Maxie Szalwinska, theatre reviewer for The Sunday Times, said McCrory “ascends to greatness” in the classical role. “She’s one of those actors you can sense has a great performance in them if a director can unlock it. This is McCrory’s,” Szalwinska said.

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Personal and Family Life Print Media

What I see in the Mirror: Helen McCrory

On August 2, 2014April 13, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

My eyes are large, with dark circles – as the Spanish say, “God put her eyes in with a sooty thumb”‘

Rosanna Greenstreet | August 2, 2014 | The Guardian

The joy of being optically challenged but with a vivid imagination is that, although a blurry, fuzzy, hazy blob stands before me, I merrily assume that I look exactly as I did the last time I could focus. At about 19. Consequently, I’m quite cheerful when I leave home, and have no desire to wear contacts. If I was interested in reality, I would not have become an actor.

My hair is wild, Janis Joplin crossed with Jimi Hendrix. There’s a nice man – Matthew – in Percy Street who tames it for me. But if there’s no time, I’ll happily pop on a wig or hat or, if it’s not too hot, both.

My eyes are large, with dark circles – as the Spanish say, “God put her eyes in with a sooty thumb.” Teeth, nondescript. Lips, full – less so now, which allows me to wear red lipstick without looking like a sex worker.

I’m small, but have always thought of myself as tall. I stand straight, with one of my two children welded to each hip. I am strong – years of ballet as a child have assured that my legs would not look out of place in a football squad lineup.

I’m a mixture of my father and my mother inside and out – Welsh and Scottish with a dash of English.

My best feature is my smile, and I suppose it will remain my best feature for ever. After all, a happy, toothless, withered old crone smiling at you is better than a grumpy, toothless, withered old crone snarling at you.

Medea Print Media Reviews

Medea, National Theatre: “Tigress, not a woman”

On July 23, 2014May 7, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Helen McCrory fascinates as a damaged and alien Medea in a ragged and brilliant production

by Philip Womack | July 23, 2014 | Port Magazine

A scene from Medea. Credit Ricard Hubert Smith — A scene from Medea at the National Theatre. Credit Ricard Hubert Smith

Euripides’ Medea is a play that continues to fascinate and horrify in equal measure. Medea’s actions – to kill her own children, her love rival, and King Creon of Corinth, in revenge for being passed over by Jason in favour of the King’s daughter – seem to us so alien and remote that we can only watch, aghast.

The National Theatre’s production sees Medea as a refugee, and casts Corinth as a humid, sweltering place of decaying splendour. The stage indicated Medea’s apartness: her domain was the ground floor, with paint peeling and no furniture; above, behind glass, were the royal family, preparing the wedding of Jason and the princess.

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Medea Print Media Reviews

Medea review – Carrie Cracknell’s version is a tragic force to be reckoned wit

On July 22, 2014April 13, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Helen McCrory excels in this modern-dress take on Euripides that is alive with complexity and psychological astuteness

After her success with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Carrie Cracknell now turns her directorial attention to an even more wronged heroine: Euripides‘ Medea, who avenges herself on Jason by murdering their two children. The virtue of this production and Ben Power’s new version is that they avoid quasi-operatic grandeur to present us with a recognisable human being who is alive with contradictions.

You sense this from the start in Helen McCrory‘s stunning modern-dress Medea. We first hear her offstage howls at Jason’s abandonment of her so that he can marry a Corinthian princess. Our first sighting of McCrory, however, is of a woman in singlet and dungarees emerging from her closet, cleaning her teeth. The complex portrait that emerges is of a Medea who is both rational and irrational, in the grip of a vengeful idée fixe and yet open to maternal feeling.

“My heart is wrenched in two,” McCrory announces at one point; and throughout, her Medea switches, with brilliant volatility, from the manipulative to the murderous to the unpredictably humane.

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Interviews Medea Print Media

Helen McCrory Interview: ‘Medea is one of the greatest parts you’ll ever play as an actress’

On July 15, 2014April 12, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

The ‘Medea’ actress talks marriage, playing the female Hamlet and her craving for comedy

by Daisy Bowie | Time Out London | July 15, 2014

Over a lengthy career, Helen McCrory has played villains (Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter films), romantics (Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’) and goons (Cherie Blair in ‘The Queen’). Now she stars as the ultimate anti-heroine, Euripides’s Medea, in a new NT production. She explains why it is the role for women.

Is Medea a bit like a female Hamlet?
‘It is, it’s one of the greatest parts you’ll ever play as an actress. Except it’s the reverse of Hamlet because he spends three hours worrying and does nothing, whereas Medea takes an hour and 15, massacres the whole fucking stage and walks off. But it’s great because she uses every shred of femininity that she has to do it, and she also has the complexity of guilt.’

Medea does some pretty nasty stuff: filicide, regicide. Is she a villain?
‘Ben Power’s adaptation focuses on disenfranchisement, on what happens when this highly educated, powerful, manipulative, eloquent woman, is not allowed to be part of society. But it also looks at acts of extreme violence, which often come from long-term brutalisation – which is Medea. She’s a product of a warring society, which is very relevant to today.’

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