The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 5, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 13, 1966 Page: 4 of 12
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7\ -V V
Dame Judith offers a rare, wondrous'Medea'
By GORDON BRADEN
Though I shall try, there is
little point in my attempting to
say anything worthwhile about
Judith Anderson in "Medea."
Her Medea is that rare thing:
a performance so nearly com-
plete, so nearly definitive that
there is simply no one else to
play it. Medea is her role; it
has been her role for eighteen
years by right of sheer theatri-
cal virtuosity; and I will not
dispute her claim.
Unless drastically revised by
the director or translator, "Me-
dea" is not a naturalistic play;
its situations, its characters, its
movement, and (if the transla-
tion is right) its language are
all on a level m ore highly
charged, more intense, more
articulate than what we con-
sider Real Life.
It is the stuff of dramatic
poetry, as Aeschylus and Shake-
speare conceived it — poetry
more akin to music than to
prose, with the human voice as
its instrument.
Absolute Flatness
And too often I have seen
productions of dramatic poetry,
both of Shakespeare and the
Greeks, commit the complemen-
tary sins of absolute flatness—
in the apparent belief that poet-
ry is what gets in the way in
production — and a grotesque
"sturm und drang" pomposity
—engendered by the equally un-
fortunate theory that poetry is
best recited in insistent mono-
tones, preferably at the top of
the lungs.
The art of reciting dramatic
poetry as dramatic poetry—not
as ritual chants, cocktail party
small talk, or public service an-
nouncements—is sadly vanish-
ing.
I say this to give some idea
what I mean when I say that
Judith Anderson is one of the
few remaining actors skilled in
true dramatic poetry.Of all liv-
ing practitioners, only Sir Laur-
ence Olivie'r knows the resources
of voice and gesture better than
she.
Variety
Hers is an incredibly expres-
sive peformance on many dif-
ferent keys. Medea remains
several different women moving
in several different directions;
but what T. S. Eliot said with
regard to playwrights is equally
apropos for actors: it is not
necessary to understand the
characters, but rather to be
vividly aware of them.
Miss Anderson's performance
is no sort of explanation of
Medea; it is a violent and stun-
ning rendering of her—and that
is, after all, what the theatre
is all about.
The beauty of her perform-
ance lies in its variety, and the
near perfect execution of each
of its diverse parts. She clings
to the steps and hisses like a
cobra, or flops to the ground
and picks at her clothes like
a sullen little girl.
Near Genius
She handles the play's few
really beautiful lines ("Not a
single violet . . .") with almost
unbelievable delicacy, and with-
in seconds is spewing forth
upon Jason with stai'k, acid
sarcasm. She fulminates to
heaven against the wretched
condition of women, then fon-
dles her children (remarkably
beautiful and delicate creatures)
with soft affection.
Her best scene is a stroke of
near-genius, where she coaxes
from her terrified nurse the
ghastly story of the death of
Creon and his daughter (a
splendid bit of "Grand Guignol"
horror in itself, unfortunately
garbled by the nurse) with all
the wide-eyed, giggly delight
of a child pulling the legs off.
a captured fly. She lies down,
puts her head in the nurse's
lap, wiggles her toes, and
coos, "Now go on — tell me
everything!"
No Chariot
Robinson Jeffers' famous
"adaptation" of the play—the
version used here—is actually,
by modern standards (com-
pared with, for example,
Michael Caccoyanis' radical
surgery on "Electra"), a fairly
straightforward translation.
The choruses have been cut
down considerably, there has
been some juggling of the mes-
senger's role. Aigeus is per-
haps more of a fool and Jason
more of a pompous ass than
Euripides intended (I have in
mind particularly Jeffers' line:
"I introduced you to the great
minds of our age"—a marve-
lous bit of vitriol on the part
of the playwright, but you will
not find it in the Greek), and,
of course, there is no dragon-
chariot at the end (I have yet
to see a production where there
is); but by and large things
remain pretty much as Euripi-
des blocked them out.
Best Translation
As a translation, it is in
many ways the best I know of:
it at least has character to it,
a bleak, gut-honest bitterness
of the sort Jeffers is good at;
but it surely lacks the rhetori-
cal strength to sustain two
hours of flying venom, most
of it spoken. The occasion cries
out for a Shakespeare.
As for the supporting actors,
they suffer much the same fate
as those in Olivier's "Othello":
they are too overshadowed by
the central character for us to
be sure whether they're any
good or not.
Complaints
The Houston Music Theater,
though certainly the only thea-
ter in town rich enough to af-
ford to attract Miss Anderson,
is simply too big; people in the
back rows would do well to
bring binoculars.
Size also necessitates an
elaborate sound system with a
dozen or so microphones dang-
ling obtrusively just over the
actors' heads.
The insertion of an intermis-
sion into a play built to run
from start to finish without a
break is unforgivable. The hiss-
ing snakes (used instead of the
dragon-chariot) look not so
much frightening as silly.
Yet these are only minor nit-
pickings. There are no defini-
tive performances of any play
of merit; this production is
probably as close to a definitive
version of "Medea" as you
could ever hope to see. And
for the opportunity to see Jud-
ith Anderson in heir most fam-
ous role we should be duly
grateful.
And the chorus, reduced to
virtual nullity already (three
members and almost no lines),
only has a tendency to get in
the way—it should have been
either expanded or eliminated
altogether.
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Coyner, Sandy. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 5, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 13, 1966, newspaper, October 13, 1966; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth244980/m1/4/: accessed May 14, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.