"Medea" starring Jennifer Kern and Matt Janes
Source:  Sun-Times - Chicago

March 8, 2000

BY HEDY WEISS theater critic

This is where it all began. You watch the production of Euripides' "Medea," which opened Monday night at the American Theater Company, and you see the most ancient roots of Western drama. Though it was written 2,500 years ago, it could have been penned the night before last.

Put any bitterly estranged couple in a divorce court and have them testify against each other, and you will hear precisely the same bilious rage and resentment--the same acid sarcasm and threats of revenge that pass between Medea, the betrayed wife and mother who sacrificed all for love, and her husband, Jason, who has left her for a younger woman with better connections.

This fleet 90-minute ATC production has been directed artfully by Brian Russell in a style that is decidedly modern yet timeless. And it features a sharp, vivid, precision-edged new translation by Nicholas Rudall, the Chicago actor and scholar who knows how to sustain the mystery and stark poetry of such ancient plays while also making them immediate and accessible.

The actors wear no masks or giant platform shoes to become larger than life, as they did in the great stone outdoor theaters of ancient Greece. But in the play's title role, actress Carmen Roman is so gigantic and relentless in her outrage and sense of abandonment, and so cunning and deliciously self-mocking in her plotting of revenge--that you half expect her to turn into the tigress she evokes in comparison.

"I understand the horror of what I must do," says Medea, as she resolves to murder her two young sons. "But passion is stronger than reason, and passion is the grief of the world." It's the way Roman moves so swiftly between passion and reason that makes her character seem so dangerous and real.

Not all the actors in this production reach Roman's level of intensity as they spin out the bloody tale of a woman scorned--robbed of her family, home, identity and status--and driven to madness. Among those who do are Yasen Peyankov, as the middle-aged warrior Jason, who spits out his self-justifications and gallingly rational arguments with an arrogance and sense of entitlement, and ultimately confronts all he has lost with a sense of pitiable anguish. As the messenger who brings word of the flesh-consuming death of Jason's new bride and her father, the King of Corinth, Ron Wells brings Euripides' cinematic poetry to life with exceptional skill. And the chorus of young women who watch the terrible fates of the characters, but are powerless to change them (Genevra Gallo, Jennifer Kern and Eva Yusa, all with delicate little mehndi tattoos that are both ancient and of the moment), are graceful in their stylized gestures and choral exhortations.

Less successful are Rob Riley's comic caricature of King Creon and Mary Ann Thebus' bland Nurse.

Set designer Scott Cooper has created the spare exterior of a house that might be found in either the Athenian or Hollywood Hills (as might Jana Stauffer's attractive linen costumes), with a circular stairway and dry vines and a large window where musician Whayne Braswell plays composer Dawn Bach's Near Eastern-tinged music. B. Emil Boulus provides the lighting that suggests the presence of the gods.

Intriguingly, the play's most physically brutal moments take place offstage. We witness only the verbal attacks. Oh, those savvy Greeks.