REVIEW: ‘Medea’ at BAM
Photo: Rose Byrne stars as Anna and Bobby Cannavale as Lucas in Simon Stone’s Medea. Photo courtesy of Richard Termine / Provided by BAM with permission.
NEW YORK — The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s new production of Medea, playing through March 8 at the Harvey Theater, is a modern-dress take on the classic Greek play, starring real-life couple Rose Byrne as Anna and Bobby Cannavale as her husband, Lucas. They are struggling to make a connection anymore, and their new reality is exasperated by the fact that Lucas has found a new person to share his life with and Anna’s grasp of reality is starting to buckle under the pressures of her crumbling personal life.
The 70-minute tragedy — and anyone who knows the original Medea knows that this story turns quite tragic indeed — plays out on a stark white set expertly designed by Bob Cousins. It’s an interesting scenic motif, one that allows director Simon Stone, who also adapted the tale from the original by Euripedes, carte blanche to add many interesting and often unsettling flourishes.
At first, the theatricality of the drama is oft-putting, almost disorienting. Byrne and Cannavale’s respective characters argue and converse while a live feed of their action is broadcast above their heads on a large white rectangular screen. The simultaneity of having the actors perform their roles below closeups of their facial expressions is an experience akin to looking at the large monitors at a concert when the musical act is too far away from one’s seat. Eventually the audience simply has to decide whether to watch the real actors or the simulated ones up above, but trying to catch glimpses of both is fascinating. They fight verbally down below, while their eyes and furrowed brows fill in the emotional blanks up above.
Anna and Lucas’ two children are portrayed on stage in a variety of typical kid scenarios, like playing video games or messing with piles of leaves. This being a stark tragedy, piles of ashes are substituted for those leaves, letting the audience in on an obvious foreshadowing for the events to come.
Byrne and Cannavale are more than able in their respective roles to convey not only a believable marriage, but a believable marriage coming undone at the seams. It’s clear that there is a shared history between these two characters, and mental illness, infidelity, anxiety, fear and parenting pressure have been factors in the past — and continue to linger in the present.
Byrne’s role of Anna receives the main narrative arc, and she proves to be exquisitely layered in how she portrays this central role. It’s almost as if she’s unaware of the impending doom. That’s probably because Anna is truly unaware of the consequences of her actions, and as few people in her life understand her visible signs of hurt and pain, she floats under the radar. That makes the shocking finale — poetically and discomfortingly staged by Stone — that much more shocking and sad.
Stone is a master interpreter of this adapted text, and there seems to be parallels between this piece and his mesmerizing production of Yerma, which played the Park Avenue Armory in 2018. Both plays have central female characters who struggle to hold on to reality, both of them portrayed with touching tenderness and fierce fractiousness by powerful actors. As a director, he is able to surround these grounding performances with no-frills staging that seems to only elevate the material and find depth in the words — that’s saying something for a drama that runs barely over an hour.
Medea at BAM is a highlight of the theatrical season, a fully realized character study of a marriage coming undone and one partner’s saddening choice to expand the misery of the situation and include her children in the pain. This one makes the audience think, grimace, look away, feel uncomfortable and consider what went wrong and what could have been changed to produce a positive outcome.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Medea, starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale, plays through March 8 at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater. Directed and adapted by Simon Stone. Running time: 70 minutes. Click here for more information and tickets.
