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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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Medea Reviews

Medea – National Theatre Review: Unforgettable and Horribly Gripping

On July 22, 2014April 28, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

A scrupulously judicious modern-dress production

by Paul Taylor | July 22, 2014 | The Independent

Helen McCrory as Medea

(Richard Hubert Smith)

This is, incredibly, the first ever staging of Medea in the National Theatre’s 50 year history. It’s an omission all the more remarkable, given the complex feminist issues raised by Euripides’ unsparing portrayal of a dumped woman driven to exacting revenge on her treacherous partner by the ultimate (and tragically self-defeating) recourse of murdering their children.

Carrie Cracknell plugs the gap now with this horribly gripping, scrupulously judicious modern-dress production (part of the Olivier’s £15 Travelex season) in which Helen McCrory gives a performance of scorching emotional power and searching psychological acuity.

Our first view is of her two little sons lying on sleeping bags and watching TV in the dilapidated guest house – which gives onto a dark, creepy garden – in which they and their mother are camping out before banishment.

Medea Reviews

Medea Review: ”Helen McCrory is on exceptional form’

On July 22, 2014April 16, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Helen McCrory triumphs as a murderous Medea with a modern touch

By Henry Hitchings | July 22, 2014 | Evening Standard

Deadly passion: Helen McCrory as killer Medea ©Alastair Muir

Helen McCrory is on exceptional form as Medea, the most disturbing of Greek tragic heroines. The character tends to be portrayed as a she-devil, a murderous manipulator who’s wild with love and rage.

McCrory powerfully conveys Medea’s bitter destructiveness, while also suggesting the vulnerability of a woman shunned by a society where she’s seen as a cunning foreigner.

Euripides’ play, almost 2,500 years old, is clear-cut and intense — a piercing, painful vision of passion and betrayal. It is giving nothing away to say that Medea kills her own children after being spurned by their father Jason, who has married another woman. Even if you don’t know the plot, its trajectory is obvious from early on, and Carrie Cracknell’s production is pacy and direct.

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Inside No. 9 "The Harrowing" Print Media Reviews

‘Inside No. 9’ Episode 6: ‘The Harrowing’ Review

On March 12, 2014May 19, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Be careful what you wish for

by Andrew Allen | March 12, 2014 | Cult Box UK

Ever since the first episode of Inside No. 9, the latest comedy series from one half of The League Of Gentlemen, there has been an unholy chorus of voices demanding a return to the darker, more gothic tones that were scattered across Royston Vasey. You know, the early, scary ones.

Well, last night, they got exactly what they asked for. And in spades. The sixth episode is called ‘The Harrowing’, and it’s fair to say that it’s a very apt title.

Aimee Ffion-Edwards (Skins) is excellent as schoolgirl Katy, a Nice Girl To Whom Bad Things Should Not Happen, and there’s great support from Poppy Rush as her best friend Shell, who idolises her out of all proportion, almost to the point of worshipping at her altar. Katy is to be paid £88 – a culturally significant number – for a special babysitting job in a crooked house where nothing ever happens, not even a phone signal.

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Doctor Who - Vampires in Venice Print Media Reviews

Doctor Who: The Vampires of Venice – Review

On October 18, 2013May 19, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Rory joins the Tardis in Toby Whithouse’s sumptuous Venetian adventure

By Patrick Mulkern | October 18, 2013 | Radio Times

Series 5 – Episode 6

Storyline
The Doctor bursts out of a cake at Rory’s stag do and takes him and his fiancée Amy on a “romantic” date to Venice in 1580. The travellers befriend Guido, a boat builder whose daughter has been enlisted into the House of Calvierri. The school is run by the severe Signora Rosanna and her lustful son Francesco, who are turning the young women in their charge into vampires. The Doctor realises that Rosanna is a fish-like alien predator from Saturnyne. Fleeing the crack in time, she and her kind have taken refuge on Earth – and she intends to sink Venice so that her children can feast on the locals. Continue reading