Imago Theatre’s stage from its production of No Exit is back in action this season, but not for No Exit. Instead, Imago is producing Medea on the famously high-concept stage, a square platform suspended three feet above the floor, rocking and tilting around its center as the actors move across it.
But where No Exit had tiny prop furniture and a ratcheting thermostat, the stage is the only trick director (and the stage’s inventor) Jerry Mouawad brings to Medea. There is in fact virtually no set dressing at all, and Mouawad and his lighting and costume crew wring from that minimalism an evocative, dusty world.
Medea has been a tough play since its debut in 431 BC, when Euripides came in last in the annual Athenian drama competition at the Dionysia festival. The hero of the play is Medea, an outsider, worshipper of the wrong gods, probable witch, wife of Jason and mother to his two sons. The myth is infamous: Jason ruins Medea’s life by taking a younger, richer, less alien bride (a princess!), and allowing his new father-in-law to exile Medea and her sons; Medea takes her revenge by killing pretty much everybody, including the children she obviously loves.
