Director doesn’t get under ‘Medea’ characters’ skins

Many first read "Medea" as college students, but this brilliant, biting tale of the extremes of vengeance makes a lot more sense as you get older. Euripides understood the bitterness of those who have loved, lost and believe life has passed them by.

The playwright respects every major character's viewpoint. Medea is a simple mother of two whose husband is leaving her to marry a princess. She's devastated and has no guarantees she'll be able to make any kind of life for herself. But Euripides doesn't allow us to blindly fall in love with her. Just when we're firmly on her side, she kills her children.

Then, too, we're prepared to hate Jason, her unfaithful husband, but he manages to come up with some decent arguments for his behavior. For example, when Medea reminds him of all the things she's done for him, he counters that she was under the power of love when she was kind to him. It wasn't her being kind. It was love. Yikes that hurts. And it has the ring of truth.

We also at first despise King Creon, father of Jason's new bride, when he tells Medea he's going to banish her. But then he explains his reasons -- she's a military danger -- and we have to agree with him as well. This flip-flopping of allegiances is one of the human elements that helps make this such a great play.

And that's my problem with Insurgo Theater's production. Director John Beane doesn't capture the complexity of behavior.

As Medea, the enormously talented Natascha Negro is all one-note whining. Jason is played by Ernie Curcio as a street-thug graduate of the Stanley Kowalski School for Acting. Chris Mayse's Creon is a bully straight out of a Cecil B. DeMille religious epic. If you don't know the script, you might think it nothing more than 105 minutes of yelling.

Gary Carton gives the production a sometimes stunning visual opulence with a simple black and white platformed set and a small, functional pool. His lights frame the story in Raphael-eloquence. Katrina Larsen and Kiel Cottril's costumes lend a touch of stark unworldliness to the brutal action.

Beane uses the small stage extremely well. He keeps the movement flowing. But his failure to get under the skin of these characters sabotages the play. It mutes what Euripides has to say about human relationships.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.