Play: Medea

The White Box Theater has once again put together a stellar performance. This time on the Greek classic, Medea by Euripides. For this performance as with many in this theater, the theater was repartitioned to meet the acting needs; however, this time the audience had front-row seats and were seated around an arena of sorts, the Greek centerpoint of all communal activity but here the centerpoint of the drama unfolding. Medea, played by Stephanie Ann Foster, played the schizophrenic role of witch, seductress and the still in love but spurned wife, and to her shame, her conflicting emotions seared by rage at being the cuckold, she kills in a cunning passion her husband's new wife, her own beauteous children, and leaves the aches and pains of her deeds for her husband to discover ... and forever carry the burden that at heart, he was the monster who allowed the monster of a first wife to foist this evil on him.

Medea remonstrates with the women of Greece and gets their approval for some form of revenge on her man who took her from a foreign land and now tosses her aside for another women. Women, symbolized by the chorus, see she has a point.

Jason and Medea still wrapped in a web of love ... and hate. Their chemistry is still there but underlining that is the new wife who has appeared. For Medea, she has been displaced. For Jason, he has recovered an element of youth by engaging to marry a young and youthful girl, with innocence as her attracting charm.

Poisoned "gifts" have been given by Medea for the new wife. Her children (assisted by the chorus) are delivering them with strict instructions NOT TO TOUCH them. The chorus has turned on Medea but is powerless to change her or her intended destruction.

Medea, crafty and spiteful, spitting revengeful words at Jason for his traitorous act of dumping her when she made him the great king who he now is. Revenge is all she has left.

Jason's new bride, young and innocent, has been entangled in the web of Medea's witchery and dies a horrible death. Tragedy upon tragedy, and so the play ends with emotions of nothing but tragedy and bitter living.