Gorgeously theatrical ‘La Medéa’ could dig deeper
Onstage at the Renaissance Theatre in Orlando, Max Pinsky’s “La Medéa” joins the string of adaptations, interpretations and other homages to Euripides’ Greek tragedy of 2,400 years ago.
Director Edmarie Montes oversees a gorgeously atmospheric production that, even if the play’s subject matter leaves you cold, is worth seeing to appreciate the theatricality.
There’s a sensuality to the production at the Ren, but it’s sensuality with an icy current running through it — appropriate for a love story so twisted it leads to the unthinkable.
Burning incense sends wafts of smoke in the air as it perfumes the room under suspended candles. For those who know the story — is it a spoiler if the tale has been around more than 2 millenniums? — Rachel Del Valle Lupo’s scenic design also gives an air of the macabre to simple childhood toys: A plastic dump truck, a stuffed monkey.
Philip Lupo’s lighting suggests the otherworldliness of witchcraft, with striking moments of the cold light of truth.
Hanging over it all is Cesar de la Rosa’s fascinating music. Haunting, pleading, desperate, the music is a character all its own — a recurring portent of the next plot development.
If this all sounds a little much, well, welcome to Greek tragedy. In the original “Medea,” the title character is a wronged wife who achieves her revenge by poisoning philandering husband Jason’s new love, a princess, as well as the woman’s royal father. She then murders the two young sons she and Jason share as a way to further punish him before escaping with the help of the gods.
Pinsky has set the story in a modern city and made Medéa a bilingual immigrant from the Dominican Republic and a powerful practitioner of hoodoo. Jason is still a social climber — but now he has left Medéa for the daughter of the “borough president.”
The assistants in Medéa’s hoodoo shop serve as the Greek chorus — and they are the ones who lend their voices to the chanting, singing and disquieting oohing that bring de la Rosa’s music to life. Two of the chorus, Joseph Quintana and Adonis Perez, also bring Medéa’s sons to life by manipulating Breanna Roberts’ entrancing puppets. Somehow the combination of the grown men’s vocalizations — children’s laughter and cries — juxtaposed with the puppets — half stick figures, half rag dolls — is more affecting than real-life juvenile actors could be.
Pinsky’s story, delivered in English and Spanish, has some tonal issues that Montes can’t quite overcome. The formality of the Greek-style prose jars against Jason’s modern vibe. And when you have a contemporary setting, it can demand a more contemporary realism: No one would ever believe Medéa’s sudden (and fake) change of heart as presented. A modern audience, too, would like to see Medéa more fully explain her rationale for doing the dirty deed.
In the title role, Olga Intriago has a burning intensity that
never lets up. This is a singleminded woman, and Intriago, seething even when outwardly placid, never forgets that. Danielle Montalvo makes an appealingly down-to-earth confidante to Medéa. Bryan Lopez, as Jason, and Esmeralda Nazario, as his lover, drift toward opposite ends of the tonal spectrum: Lopez feels like a real city slicker; Nazario is almost comically artificial as his snobby paramour.
Playwright Pinsky uses this “Medéa” to also flirt with serious ideas about identity and assimilation. English is described as “the language of money and power” — and it’s used as a weapon. “Speak English!” wails Jason’s
new squeeze when Medéa berates her in Spanish for forgetting her roots. An enigmatic character, also Dominican, downplays her heritage to maintain a friendship with a shallow white woman. It feels like a missed opportunity to have not pursued these ideas further, but what is explored onstage is full of those theatrical treats.