urban excavations

Medea Re-Versed
Featuring Siena D’Addario, Melissa Mahoney, Mark Martin, Jacob Ming-Trent, Luis Quintero, Stephen Michael Spencer, and Sarin Monae West
Red Bull Theater and Bedlam | Sheen Center
September 12, 2024 – October 20, 2024 [extended]
production site

Mom has gone over the deep end when husband leaves her and the kids and she decides to end it for many of them. What motivates all this mess? After the show, in this reimagined, newly energized, hip hop infused, poignant, witty Luis Quintero conceived and hosted musical and magical Medea Re-Versed playing at the Sheen Center, Quintero greets the audience. Down the stairs of the Sheen Center’s second black box space for a conversation, extending the stay and our time with his energy. Eurides’ Medea, who has been abandoned with her young children by her husband Jason (the Golden Fleece purloining Jason) — the dude she stuck with through thick and thin, the same guy she helped through cunning and witchcraft to escape various messes. Medea is going to do something about this, and everyone suffers in the end.

Quintero hosts us in the performance space, is the leader-of-the-chorus as M.C., and has crafted this show out of the ancient Greek source material into a series of rap battles. A beat boxer (Mark Martin) provides the rhythm line, and a set of musicians on electric guitar and bass (Siena D’Addario and Melissa Mahoney) wrap us in metallic twinges. The female energy in this room is strong, the male energy makes sense, the tragedy of the story at the root of the music hurts our heart while energizing our soul. This music swings, even for the occasional and reluctant visitors to the rap genre. These performers earn listing in the program with the singing characters, “Guitar” with as much weight as “Jason” and “Medea” and this creation earns this. A harder working and more successful singing and dancing and playing ensemble would be difficult to find.

Jacob Ming-Trent, Quintero himself, and the versatile Stephen Michael Spencer are the chorus, commenting and explaining and pestering the characters in the story, and some of the trio taking on double and triple duty as needed to take on additional characters — Spencer as Medea’s wandering husband Jason and Ming-Trent King Creon and several others.

Hip hop takes on the storytelling, conveying humor of new parenthood and young love and the pathos of marital abandonment for the new young thing. Bouncy humor of the lyrics and the drive of the musical beats keep us bouncing and engaged, setting up the horror of Medea’s final revenge in the hand of Sarin Monae West as Medea. She is not mad, she is engaged; she is not crazy, she’s coping; she’s not placid, she’s all action. And in this treatment of this story of a woman used and discarded by the father of her children, she has reasons for what she does.

In the end, we also understand Jason’s motivations a bit more but everyone is part of this tragedy, with no heroes. Quintero tells us in a program note that he looked to the stories of contemporary women convicted of killing their children to explore the almost impossible question: how can mothers kill their children and what could have moved them to consider this option, the elimination of their own flesh and blood, as the answer to their pain and rage? West takes us part of the way to understanding, Spencer as the wandering spouse Jason illustrates his decisions as strategic rather than entirely heartless, and we sit in our 21st century lives, hearing the story with a 21st century heartbeat, pulsating anew.

© Martha Wade Steketee (September 24, 2024)

Playwright | Louis Quintero, adapted from Euripides
Director | Nathan Winkelstein (also “co-conceived”)
Set Design | Emmie Finckel
Costume Design | Nicole Wee
Lighting Design | Cha See
Sound | Matt Otto
Movement Director | Tiffany Rachelle Stewart
Composer | Tre Matthews