In my last post I wrote about my eye-opening visit to the Guildhall Art Gallery and how amazed I'd been by the Roman Amphitheatre down in its basement. So, when a few weeks after my visit I saw that a classical Greek play - Medea - was going to be performed among the ruins I jumped at the chance to see it!
Set in Corinth, in Ancient Greece, the play begins shortly after the eponymous Medea has been left by her husband Jason, who's been offered the chance to trade up and marry Glauce, daughter of the King of Corinth. Needless to say, feelings are hurt, Medea becomes vengeful and events take a rather nasty turn...
The production was presented fairly traditionally, taking into account how plays such as this one would have been staged in ancient times. Women likely would not have been present in the audience and almost certainly would not have been permitted to act, and as such, all the parts in the modern production were played by men. In ancient Greece masks would have been worn by the actors to cover this fact and also to make it easier for actors to play multiple characters, and so too last night did all the actors don over-sized plaster strip masks like the one on the programme cover shown above. Whilst these aspects did take a little getting used to, I thought it was an unusual aesthetic decision which paid off - the masks encouraged the actors to become really expressive with their body language which made up for the lack of movement available in their faces. You couldn't help but be totally engrossed by the foreboding atmosphere as the tense marital situation built to a dramatic conclusion.
All of the actors were very impressive but a special mention should go to Timothy George who played not one but three characters - Nurse, Jason and Messenger - with particular skill! His opening speech as the Nurse immediately grabbed the audience and let us know we were in for a thrilling night, whilst his turn as Jason made me almost sympathetic to a character who I always thought was a complete snake when I read his part at AS Level!
I feel lucky to have been part of a relatively small group of people experiencing this limited run of performances - the first time a play has been put on in this setting for around 1500 years! I really hope this will be the first of many productions put on in this unique space, so that many more people get the chance to experience this unique arena in the way it was originally intended.
