Medea at Dream Laboratory

I went to see Jeremy Menekseoglu's latest version of Medea last night, which has been getting very good reviews. Trent the Uncatchable was there, and he urged me to sit in the front row, which I noted he was NOT doing. Because Dream Theatre is a "shatter the 4th wall" kind of place, sitting in the front row sometimes opens you up for one-sided conversations with an actor in character.

Anyway, I took up the challenge, and sat in the front row. As it turned out, none of the actors really did the thing where they pick an audience member to speak to as if the audience member were really a character in the show.

The new "laboratory" space is very intimate - it was configured mostly in just 2 rows. I hear it will seat 30 with the way they laid out the seats for this show.

The show itself was quite spectacular. I had seen it before, in a version with a chorus, which this version did not have. I did not feel the lack - I guess I don't recall what the chorus did - but the drama among the central characters was not lacking. I don't want to spoil the basic myth - go do a search on Medea if you want the catalog of horrors that come from the original - but this is a full reimagining - still set in the Greek world of myth and magic - but with an incursion of modern American psychology.

I kept feeling the subtext of... this is what happens when parents divorce and when neither cares for the kids anymore. But, on steroids... or rather, with deadly spells.

In our own day, as in the Age of Bronze,
Children can become expendable pawns.