Medea and Its Double

When Euripides' tragic heroine Medea, after being betrayed by her husband, resolves to kill her own children, she also admits her guilt: “I now am well aware what crimes I venture on, but rage…over my better reason hath prevailed.” How we in the audience decide to resolve these two sides of Medea—the innocent lover and the vengeful murderer—is the lingering question of the classic Greek tragedy. But “Medea and Its Double,” a new interpretation by the visiting Korean performance group Seoul Factory, attempts to make that puzzle a little bit easier on us.

The conceit behind director Hyoung-Taek Limb's production is that two actors are better than one. Kyoung Lee and See-Yeon Koo portray dueling sides of the tragic heroine at the same time, peering at each other, shocked by what they see. By placing the ever-hopeful romantic Medea behind the jilted lover, Limb implies we will understand her rather than turn away from her misdeeds.

If you're encountering your first “Medea,” skip this one, as it requires you to know the story already. Limb has stripped Euripides' script down to a few lines, distilling the essence of plot and emotion, and all the lines are spoken in Korean. Those who do know the plot, though, will find it easy enough to follow, thanks to the wealth of storytelling devices Limb weaves together from traditional Korean performance. Nestled behind a scrim, Min-Jung Kim performs pansori—one-person traditional folk singing—that provides an eerily prescient soundtrack to the proceedings. When Medea and her lover Jason consummate their marriage, they perform a martial arts routine that combines suggestion with danger, a fitting combination for this eternally sparring pair.

These devices certainly show us more, but does “Medea and Its Double” really tell us more? Limb's production aims to give "Medea" more depth by breaking the heroine in two, but the gravity of Euripides' original comes from the reconciliation of two opposing forces in one person. When facing an impossible choice, we can never stay as innocent as Medea's wide-eyed better half is here. The drama should be in the inner turmoil, the seemingly unconquerable personal battles that we fight in our own lives, albeit on a less epic scale.


Presented by La MaMa E.T.C. in association with Seoul Factory at La MaMa E.T.C., 74A E. 4th St., NYC. Jan. 7–24. Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, or www.lamama.org.