Medea
For Dream Theatre’s first nightmare in its new Pilsen storefront, the prolific, promising Jeremy Menekseoglu (the most charismatic presence onstage, even as he does triple duty as adapter and director) plays Argonaut Jason. As a military-uniformed deadbeat dad, he’s the center of a stylized-horror update of Euripides that unreels like a Dario Argento divorce drama. The couple’s sons, Mermerus and Pheres, are still in for it, and in fact their stage time is more prolonged than usual, as Mom and Dad manipulate them like disposable pawns in a shifting, sadomasochistic battle of the sexes. Likewise for Jason’s second wife, Princess Glauce, for whom Jason puts on a belatedly repentant-father act before Medea (overacted by Martindale) has the kids drop off her poisoned-bridal-gown care package.
Menekseoglu’s most inspired tweak is the chorus, which embodies Medea’s fractured psychological trauma as six zombie-fied girls in blood-spattered party dresses (Anna Weiler’s costumes are shoestring ingenuity at its finest). They’re also used to great, unsettling effect as meandering cast-aside urchins in Weiler’s immersive production design, which begins at the front door with a lobby dressed up as a creepy child’s playroom.
Atmosphere aside, though, the pace often slackens in an otherwise economically packaged tale. (More chilling soundscapes and fewer ironic ’40s girl-group tunes might help.) And while Medea’s conflicted Madonna-whore servitude is well conveyed, her sons—the real victims Menekseoglu intends to spotlight—aren’t given enough dialogue to make us more sympathetic to their plight; they’re often relegated to hovering like bug-eyed wallpaper. Clearly, the kids aren’t all right, but Menekseoglu ought to take another stab at them.
