Revenge is not sweet

The conflicted chorus of DalTheatre Productions' Medea. (Ken Kam Photo)

As Valentine’s Day approaches, the hottest ticket in town is a story about love's dark side, revenge.

DalTheatre's production of the ancient Greek tragedy Medea is sold out.

Written some 2,500 years ago by the Greek playwright Euripides, Medea is the story of a woman who abandons her homeland and betrays her own family for the love of her husband, Jason. But after her children are born, he abandons her for another woman. She is consumed with rage.

For the DalTheatre Production, five actresses—Nicole O’Connor, Bonnie Abramsky, Claire Hage, Emma Laishram and Helena Pipe—share the role of Medea.

“Euripides gives you so many different points of views,” say Margot Dionne, director of the play. “So you’re taking in the human condition and you’re considering it from different standpoints.”

To give it a contemporary spin, Medea is portrayed as an African princess who follows Jason (Benjamin Irvine) in his pursuit of a throne and glory. While Jason is offered the hand of the daughter of King Kreon and lives in a royal palace, Medea and the two boys are pushed to the side, and live on the outskirts of the Saudi capital.

“The sand adds such a primitive feel to it,” says Claire Hage, one of the Medeas. “When you walk, your feet digging into it, takes you there, to a different world.”

Medea is a difficult character to sympathize with. She lashes back at the wrongs committed against her by Jason, not only by poisoning her romantic rival, the princess, and the king who has exiled her, but by killing her own children. She chooses a form of vengeance that will make her suffer as acutely as Jason.

“It’s all there,” says Ms. Dionne. “The extreme emotions that give rise to fault and sensation… It is an incredible text, because it could have been written yesterday. It’s timeless.”

Ms. Hage says that although the play is ancient it connects to many people today and remains as shocking as ever.

“This is about a domestic affair,” she says. “This is a man leaving his wife for someone else. When your heart is broken you turn into another person and that’s something a lot of people can connect to, trying to find themselves again.”

Medea hatches a plan to get at her husband's new wife through her children, played by Tristahn McCalla and Cory Taylor. (Ken Kam Photo)

Jamie Galbraith, a member of the Greek chorus, says anyone can relate to the theme of the story.

“Greeks do a good job of creating those kinds of stories that make you look at yourself and your life and see it in the play as well,” she says. “We’ve all been hurt in love; it’s a very universal theme.”

She says that to audition they had two weeks to memorize a minute and a half monologues. After they passed, they were given their roles. Then they started to prepare by doing table reading. This means sitting around a table with the other actors reading their parts and familiarizing themselves with the background of their characters.

They’ve had six weeks to put the play together and memorize all their lines. They only had Sundays off, staying for four hours every day after classes and eight hours on Saturdays.

“It’s been terrifyingly fast,” says Ms. Galbraith. “But in a good way. It’s been fun and we’re ready.”