MEDEA

Many already know the play of MEDEA, the greek tragedy written by Euripides. This play is able to adapt to our modern society as the events which occur during the play keep happening nowadays. Every day we hear at least about one man/woman who has acted agressively and has even killed someone in order to get revenge from the man/woman who betrayed him/her.
Because this events are depicted in the play, many occasions the story is adapted in order to fit the society at the time(i.e the addition of a cellphone or props such as that).
The version of MEDEA we saw was an adaptation of the original Greek tragedy and even though many elements of the text remained the same, such as the dialogue, the costumes and props were changed. In addition the conventions from greek tragedy were not applied at all and instead used common theatrical conventions seen in occidental theatre.
The reason I suppose for the costumes annd props to be elemnts in our society is to remind us how this events keep ocurring and have been going on and keep repeating since ancient greece. This design concept is interesting and might sound really innovative when explained, however we´ve seen this already multiple times. Not only in other adaptations of MEDEA but also in adaptations of other greek tragedies, for instance, LAS TROYANAS which was our school´s play for2007 and had a similar, if not the same, concept.
Im not trying to say that concept is a bad one, but im trying to highlight the idea of this concept being overused. However i found some problems in the execution of this, sometimes it went to over-the.top. For instance Egeo was motorcycle driver and carried a helmet, some might argue this had comedic purposes however if ound it too distracting. However the major flaw i found in the execution of the design concept was the use of a Television from many decades ago as it told the revenge of MEDEA. In this case it was probably an error to include this part because the preoious scene built up too much tension as we knew MEDEA was about to assassinate her children to et revenge on her cheting husband. Then the TV came and as one character said a sentence the TV narrator finished it, however sometimes there was a pause between what the actor said and the narrator´s continuation and it was distracting and just took all the tension away.
In the acting aspect the actress which portrayed MEDEA had a powerful voice and her acting was the most outstanding out of all. It really standed out the most of all the actors. Also the choir had interesting interactions between them and many actions they performed were coordinated and precise, especially moments in which they moved elemnts which would later be used as part of the stage. The only problem it had with the acting in general was the portrayal of JASON, the actor used the same entonation for the most part, and for the most part acted the same, his voice sounded fake and honestly as he came to stage i hoped and waited for him to leave the stage to see MEDEA and the choir act together.
To finish this review i must highlight the striking changes of scenery, there were no blackouts during the play which really helped the tension to build up. At moments the scenerry changed as the actors kept acting as all it was needed for the scenery to change was a curtain in the back or to pull down the existing one which covered the real stage.
As I ve tried to analyze different aspects from the play I come to a final question, i ask myself what are the complications the director faces when directing not only the acting aspect, but also the execution of the design and direction concept?