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Two Boys in a Room: Medea by Kate Mulvany and Anne-Louise Sarks

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Figure 1

Photo supplied by Silo Theatre, courtesy of Andi Crown Photography

Figure 2

Photo supplied by Silo Theatre, courtesy of Andi Crown Photography

Figure 3

Photo supplied by Silo Theatre, courtesy of Andi Crown Photography

Notes

  1. Mossman (2011), p. 4.

  2. Stuttard (2014), p. 188.

  3. Mossman (2011), p. 1. Filicide, the act of killing one’s child, is a recurring topic in myth and fiction. Luschnig notes that the reason which Medea gives for considering the death of her children is similar to the motives of real-life killers of their children: ‘the altruistic motivation (that the children are better off dead, or that the parent is saving them from a worse fate), revenge against a spouse, and the unwanted child motive (the children have become burdens; Jason found them so and Medea has not considered them in her arrangements for her own future)’ (2007, pp. 101–102).

  4. Mossman (2011), p. 1.

  5. Mulvany and Sarks (2015b).

  6. Mulvany and Sarks (2015b). Kate Mulvany is an Australian award-winning playwright and actor.

  7. For the reception of Greek drama in Australia from the end of the 19th century to the present, see Monaghan (2016). Interestingly enough, Monaghan reports that since the very early stagings, the character of Medea was most prominent, and it gave many female protagonists (from Adelaide Ristori to Zoe Caldwell) the chance to be hailed as great dramatic actors ((2016), pp. 422–423, 432). See also Monaghan (2006) for a discussion of three Australian productions of Medea in the late 20th century.

  8. Brooks (2016).

  9. Because the subtitle of the play – ‘original concept by Anne-Louise Sarks after Euripides’s – refers to Euripides as the original source, I will not take into consideration here other possible classical sources.

  10. Stuttard (2014), p. 170.

  11. Luschnig (2007), p. 104.

  12. Luschnig (2007), p. 114.

  13. The children’s physical features are also emphasized in the scene reported by the messenger in which the children arrive to the palace and are lovingly touched by the old servants. Luschnig (2007), p. 115.

  14. Stuttard (2014), p. 197.

  15. Stuttard (2014), p. 198.

  16. Segal (1997), p. 174.

  17. Golden (1971), p. 13. Golden also notes how Creon’s children, Aegeus’s childlessness and having children in general play an important role in the tragedy (pp. 13–14).

  18. Golden (1971), p. 14.

  19. Mulvany and Sarks (2015b).

  20. As dramaturg for the theatre company Hayloft of Melbourne, Sarks worked on a Thyestes (2010), and on an adaptation of Sophocles’s Philoctetes entitled Seizure (2012). After Medea (2012) co-written with Kate Mulvany, she co-wrote with Benedict Hardie By Their Own Hands (2013), based on the story of Laius, Jocasta and Oedipus, in which she also acted as Jocasta. Finally, with Jada Alberts she co-wrote Elektra/Orestes (2015), which she also directed.

  21. Boon (2015). Sarks’s opinion of the continued relevance of the classics is also shared by Wesley Enoch, author of Black Medea (2005), whose protagonist is an Aboriginal Australian who kills her son in order to stop the cycle of violence and abuse that runs in Jason’s family. Asked about his interest in Greek myth, Enoch replied that ‘The Classics are the Classics because they have Universal stories to tell. These Universal stories are not contained in one culture but inhabit all cultures. They pose questions and provide advice so that we understand the human condition better. Humanity needs stories we can go back to over and over, retelling them so we can measure how much we’ve grown’ (‘Black Medea’ 2015).

  22. Boon (2015).

  23. Sarks (2016). Discussing her preference to work with co-authors, Sarks told me that she considers herself a theatre maker, rather than simply a playwright. In fact, she has also worked in theatre as an actor, dramaturg and director. Thus, she does not want to sit at home alone, but would rather engage and build a script with other people, collectively. ‘Theatre is a collective process’, she said, ‘and that’s where I’m most comfortable’ (Sarks 2016).

  24. For their initial workshop and Sydney production, Sarks preferred to have two boys who had never acted before, because she was interested in the authenticity of their behaviour: ‘they were not performing, they were being kids in a room’, she explained (Sarks 2016).

  25. Mulvany and Sarks (2015a), p. 5.

  26. Sarks (2016).

  27. Sarks (2016).

  28. Sarks (2016, 2018).

  29. Shuttleworth (2015).

  30. Liederfollower (2015). The Gate Theatre in London seats 75 people, while the Belvoir Downstairs in Sydney, where the play premiered, seats 80. In those small spaces, said Sarks, ‘you were very close to [the boys], you were in that room with them’. In Poland, on the contrary, the staging was quite abstract. The play was performed in a large theatre, and the setting did not represent a naturalistic bedroom and a locked door (Sarks 2016).

  31. Brooks (2016).

  32. Except for the article’s subheadings, all page numbers for quotations from Mulvany and Sarks’s Medea will be indicated in parentheses in the text.

  33. Ownership of the Golden Fleece seems to refer to royal power more than eternal life (Lordkipanidze (2001), pp. 3–4). It would seem, therefore, that this reference to living forever would be another detail created by Sarks and Mulvany to add an element of tragic irony to the situation. However, the origin of the Golden Fleece has some connection to the situation of the two boys: siblings Phrixios and Helle were taken away from a sacrificial death by a flying golden ram, whose fleece later was hung up and known as the ‘golden fleece’ (‘Golden Fleece’ 1995). This classical connection between the Golden Fleece and the death of two children, however, is less-known than the rest of the Medea and Jason story and so probably not very relevant for the spectators of Mulvany and Sarks’s Medea.

  34. In the London staging, an Aran jumper was used as the ‘golden fleece’ (Allfree 2015).

  35. ‘How do you solve a problem like Medea – Kate Mulvany’ (2015).

  36. Sarks (2016).

  37. Sarks told me that they tested a number of different deaths before settling on poison. Medea should appear quite firm with the boys regarding the need to drink up the cordial, Sarks added, so much so that the older boy would get an inkling that probably something is wrong (Sarks 2016).

  38. Sarks (2016).

  39. Sarks (2016). Talking about her recent modern adaptation of Medea (which was staged in London at the Almeida Theatre around the same time as Mulvany and Sarks’s played at the Gate theatre), writer Rachel Cusk expressed exactly the opposite point of view: ‘I guess there are a couple of women on the planet who murder their children, but these days we see that as psychotic behaviour, those people are mentally ill, they suffer a great deal and they don’t kill their children for the reasons Medea kills her children’, she stated, adding that she ‘couldn’t write a play in a modern setting about a woman who kills her children’ (Rustin 2015).

  40. Griffin (2014), p. 15.

  41. A reviewer for the London performance stated that the set ‘turns the boys’ play room into a kind of prison’ (Wolf 2015).

  42. Sommerstein (2010), p. 213.

  43. Luschnig (2007), p. 201.

  44. Luschnig (2007), p. 97.

  45. Sarks stated that she did not know the existence of these plays when she started working on hers (Sarks 2017).

  46. Billington (2015). See also Hitchings (2015), Liederfollower (2015) and Shuttleworth (2015).

  47. Sarks (2017).

  48. Stoppard (2000), p. 19.

  49. Stoppard (2000), p. 23.

  50. ‘How do you solve a problem like Medea – Anne-Louise Sarks’ (2015).

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  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Daniela Cavallaro

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Correspondence to Daniela Cavallaro.

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Cavallaro, D. Two Boys in a Room: Medea by Kate Mulvany and Anne-Louise Sarks. Int class trad 27, 239–254 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-018-0483-9

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