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.’
Helen McCrory’s dressing room is a grotty bedsit high up in the National Theatre. She says that, on first nights, the actors in the other bedsits rattle their windows, which sounds terrifying, as if they were all in prison and protesting against Chekhov. I reject the cage as an interview venue, so we slope onto a balcony. She looks odd in sunlight, because she is so gothic, a dark Bambi with huge eyes and a huge mouth, sitting on the body of a small, frenetic doll. Mostly she is still. Sometimes she vibrates.
