
Seeing Medea and Jerry Springer - The Opera in the same week demands some kind of comparison, if only just for fun. An immortal work versus temporal trash? The perennial entertainment value of high emotions? The bells and whistles theatre has accumulated over the years, culminating in JSTO's barrage of operatic, religious, television and musical conventions, served up with a wink and a grin.
But what really makes Medea a work for the ages is its irony. Seana McKenna's performance highlights the distance between what Medea is telling people and what she's thinking -- motivations, goals and public perception all operate on their own tracks. In my experience of the play on the page, I had always focused on the emotions she must have been feeling in order to act so brutally. McKenna totally turned her into a schemer--arranging for other people to carry out her killing and arranging her getaway, leaving no one any wiser until her plan kicks in (signalled by a burst of flame on the stage--is it possible to eliminate all the cheese from modern productions of Greek tragedies?). There is more "how" than there is "why" in Medea.
With Jerry Springer -- the opera and the TV show -- our ignorance of the motives of the actors/guests is part of the pleasure. We don't want to know how they came to be cheating, how they managed to coax their lover onto the stage. We want it to be a mystery, their participation on the show, the pleasure they derive from their compromising engagements (affairs and perversions--all the same, all the same). The audience can stay back, keep its distance and experience them as freaks. But because we can see Medea's mind at work, we become engaged in her intentions and their deployments, even though, child murderer she is, she's the biggest freak of all.
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