Taking Hostages to Right a Wrong

THEATER REVIEW | 'MEDEA'

Richard Termine
Theodora Skipitares’s production of “Medea” incorporates her signature puppets and masks.

By CARYN JAMES

The New York Times, Published: March 19, 2008

There’s plenty of room in theater for a revisionist “Medea” in which the world’s angriest betrayed wife is still furious at her husband, Jason, but this time doesn’t kill their sons to punish him. (That was always the ultimate act of cutting off your nose to spite your face.) A muddled, sort of revisionist version, though, is what we have in Theodora Skipitares’s flat new production at La MaMa. As it ends, Medea ascends in a chariot under the protection of the gods, and says she’s taking the boys with her, but it’s entirely unclear whether the children are dead or aliv

In an equally vague program note Ms. Skipitares says that before Euripides, the Medea myth did not have her murdering her children. She may have intended to follow that lead, and leave the ending open to interpretation, but there’s a difference between ambiguity and downright confusion. A lucidly presented, less lethal Medea might have provided the one enlivening element.

The production relies on Ms. Skipitares’s trademark puppetry and multimedia style: bunraku puppets with actors operating and speaking behind them, along with a few video projections and shadow puppets. Even visually, though, there isn’t much to grip an audience. The Greek chorus is composed of three women wearing giant gold masks covering half their bodies, with their legs sticking out, which makes them look like bobble-head dolls. Nicky Paraiso operates the Medea puppet, and while nontraditional casting has its place, it’s disconcerting to hear a male voice speaking when Medea bemoans her fate as a powerless woman.

Richard Termine
A scene from "Medea" at the La MaMa Annex.

Ms. Skipitares was creating this kind of puppet theater when “The Lion King” wasn’t even a gleam in Julie Taymor’s eye, which is partly why her latest work seems so tame and familiar. Without a flash of originality — or the clearly defined ambiguity she seems to want — this is just one more inanimate “Medea.”

“Medea” continues through March 30 at La MaMa Annex, 74A East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 475-7710 or lamama.org.