Medea at Soho Place

Well that was an unforgettable hour and a half!  High expectations preceded this and I am pleased to say the production definitely delivered.  I saw Helen McCrory’s  Medea at the National and she was amazing -  all powerful ice cold fury.  Sophie Okonedo’s Medea is different again.  A powerful wounded creature emerging from her lair,  prowling the stage seething with rage and vengeance but with sharp wit and intelligence too, gaining sympathy which made the horror all the more effective. 

 The performance in the round in a brand new and very comfortable theatre meant that the whole audience was gathered round and somehow complicit whilst also being horrified onlookers unable to stop the headlong rush to disaster.  The cast positioned in the audience certainly helped with that as they wrung their hands and tried to persuade of better ways.   There were a few things that are clearly fashionable at the moment - slow motion movement and rain in particular - but they were certainly not superfluous. Ben Daniels was impressive as all of the male characters, prowling the bounds of the bare, stripped back stage,  relentlessly circling Medea adding to the feeling of intense claustrophobia. I need some time to recover now.

One thing that was pretty shocking for a brand new theatre was the traffic jam on the stairs on the way out - talking to an attendant there is another staircase but they only open it for emergencies - I think standing for longer than for any of the elderly theatres around London is a bit of an emergency.  In fact we were lucky and standing by the lift when it arrived and that allowed us to jump the queue to a fairly clear foyer and I still got my train. 

I was clutching my programme on the tube platform on the way home and someone stopped  me to ask how I had found it as he was seeing it next week so it’s clearly got the buzz around it, and well deserved.  Everyone on the tube was also debating the rights and wrongs - always a sign of a good one - one of the oldest of plays and it’s still hitting the spot. 

Highly recommended