MEDEA

Magma stream flew on the stage. After it cooled down a human habitation was built on it. Now it fell into decay and from the first glance it is clear that the mistress is left by her man: water flows from the tap, so there is a whole Stygian lake on the floor. The ‘Medea’ world, the way it was created by the artist Sergei Barkhin, is life built on a sleeping volcano. Together with the artist, the director Kama Ginkas makes the show out of the oppositely charged texts of Seneca’s tragedy who read his ‘Medea’ to the bloody emperor Nero and of the drama by Anouilh who retold the myth in terms of modern life.

Ginkas, the great master of accursed questions, brings the audience to a nonplus again. Today he suggests choosing what is more horrible: a destructive commonness or destructive spontaneous feeling; who deserves more compassion – the daughter of Caucasia with her hard-edged feeling or the downtrodden with his work Yappy with plastic bags from a supermarket? Medea clings to him, threatens him, begs him, squirms in a fit of desire, wails, cries, - he only beats off her attacks wearily, knowing in advance what will happen next: she’ll cut her babies’ throats and then fly away as a golden bird. She, he and the audience – everybody understands that the slaughter and flight are symbolic acts: her babies are no more than rubber Kewpie dolls and her flight is just a circus act. But due to these manipulations in Jason’s eyes one may see a man’s thousand-year fear of the woman he fell out of love with.

Elena Kovalskaya