Euripides persuades us that love is what makes us human | Letter
We ruin, waste and trivialise human life by ignoring that, writes Michael BulleyCharlotte Higgins is right to see Medea, in Euripides’s tragedy, as heroic (Greek tragedies like Medea are an ethical...
View ArticleThe week in theatre: Grenfell: System Failure; Medea; Trouble in Butetown –...
Playground; @sohoplace; Donmar Warehouse, LondonRichard Norton-Taylor and Nicolas Kent’s second Grenfell drama is a shocking dissection of negligence; Sophie Okonedo breathes fire as Medea; and Diana...
View ArticleWhat’s the least Christmassy thing I can think of? Ben Duke’s Ruination
Lost Dog has a reputation for taking sideways looks at classic tales and taking them into unlikely spaces, but might an interrogation of the murderous Medea in the bowels of the Royal Opera House prove...
View ArticleSophie Okonedo to play Medea at new West End theatre
The production, beginning next February, will be directed by Dominic Cooke for @sohoplace in London Sophie Okonedo is to star as Medea at the new West End theatre @sohoplace in a production directed by...
View ArticleMedea review – Adura Onashile exudes awesome authority in bloody tragedy
The Hub, EdinburghLiz Lochhead’s Scots verse spits wit and venom as male power meets female determination with operatic intensity, in this National Theatre of Scotland stagingEverybody is larger than...
View ArticleAge of Rage review – ancient Greek tragedy explodes into our times
Barbican, LondonWhile the emotional complexities remain, Ivo van Hove’s high-octane makeover featuring unrelenting pyrotechnics and riveting performances is a visual epicThe fires are being stoked even...
View ArticlePunchdrunk: The Burnt City review – spectacle eclipses story in siege of Troy...
One Cartridge Place, LondonThis immersive retelling of Greek tragedies is stylish and atmospheric but lacks narrative momentum and its scattered scenes can be frustratingly arcaneIt is immediately...
View ArticleTop 10 single mothers in fiction | Beth Morrey
They often get as rough a ride from books as they do from the world, but some writers, from Jane Austen to Sue Townsend, have given lone parents authentic life beyond the clichesSingle mothers have a...
View ArticleThe Seven Pomegranate Seeds review – Euripides tied in knots
Rose theatre, Kingston upon ThamesOverly stylised theatrics mar this revival of Colin Teevan’s monologues featuring Medea, Phaedra and others from ancient tragediesA fringed curtain of string hangs...
View ArticleThe Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema review – flesh-and-blood take on...
Avignon festivalMartin Crimp’s version of Euripides’ Phoenician Women is sly and violent, while its sphinx’s riddles read like exam questions from hellHe might recently have been haunting the National...
View ArticleBlueprint Medea review – Euripides explodes in modern London
Finborough theatre, LondonJulia Pascal’s dynamic production sees Medea reborn as a former fighter against Isis who finds Jason in the British capitalEuripides’ Medea is not just a bloodthirsty...
View ArticleTop 10 books about angry women
Stories of female rage were for centuries often stifled or spun. From Euripides to Jean Rhys, Stephen King to Gillian Flynn, here are some of the exceptionsWe are angry. If the last two years have...
View ArticleMedea review – a funny, brutal and raw masterpiece
Barbican, LondonSimon Stone’s smart and harrowing retelling of Euripides is performed by a flawless ensemble Euripides’ Medea was first performed in Athens, in 431BC– and it came last in a competition....
View ArticleTrojan Women: the Greek tragedy that became a queer Korean opera
A bold new show retells the Euripides classic through traditional pansori, K-pop and the story of ‘comfort women’ in the second world warIn 1991, Ong Keng Sen directed Euripides’ Trojan Women in a...
View ArticleFound in translation: how women are making the classics their own
Women have long been marginalised in the world of ancient texts, but female scholars and translators are finally having their sayIf you look up the subject heading “female classicists” in the large...
View ArticleMedea review – all-female cast excel as Euripides meets modern-day Maddy
Bristol Old VicWriter Chino Odimba and director George Mann meld ancient and new in an admirable production with first-rate performances The Medea we know so well is the Euripides version, but the...
View ArticleThe one where Medea saves her kids: lost classics of Greek tragedy
In his new book, Matthew Wright analyses the remaining evidence of hundreds of Athenian texts that, packed with sex, magic and happy endings, would give a radically different impression of the...
View ArticleMy Mother Medea review – child refugees given a voice in twist on classic myth
Unicorn theatre, LondonHolger Schober’s clever two-hander presents Medea’s children as unwanted arrivals in a new school, in a timely riff on notions of them and usEriopis (Stephanie Levi-John) and...
View ArticleFrom sci-fi Brontë to Hamlet on the savanna: when classics are relocated
As West Yorkshire Playhouse presents a futuristic take on the 19th-century Villette, here are five shows that reimagine a story in a surprising new settingI’d be surprised if there’s a more unlikely...
View ArticlePhaedra(s) review – Isabelle Huppert flays audience in punishing triple bill
Brooklyn Academy of Music, New YorkStretching to well over three hours, three interpretations of the myth of Phaedra turn into a rugby ruck of postmodernismIt’s tough to feel too much pity for Phaedra...
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