Photo by Johan-Persson

Medea and Patriarchy

A horrible crime - a brutalised, loving mother

The 2023 production of Medea at Soho Place in London, directed by Dominic Cooke and adapted by Robinson Jeffers, was lauded for its intense emotional depth and stark minimalist design. Sophie Okonedo’s portrayal of Medea earned universal praise, with critics noting her measured, deliberate descent into vengeance, making her both terrifying and captivating. Deborah Levy (below) suggests Okonedo's performance may be a major event in theatre history. Ben Daniels took on multiple roles, including Jason and Creon, seamlessly transitioning between characters, which emphasized Medea's confrontation with a patriarchal world. Here is an excerpt from a review by Deborah Levy in The New Statesman:

Jason has patriarchy and the law on his side. Does he need anything else? Does he even need charm or a good body or intelligence or empathy or a healthy moral compass? And what about the children in this broken home? Their sweet sons wear party paint on their faces, lick ice cream cones, don’t speak much and try to not notice their parents are at war.
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Okonedo is one of the greatest actors on the contemporary international stage. Her formidable Medea will go down as a legend in theatre history. Okonedo shows us what it costs Medea to not be submissive to the men who have power over her fate. When we see her on her knees, begging the king, Creon, for his mercy (she is required to immediately leave her home with her sons), we understand what that costs her, too. Is it enough to be in possession of magic and to hope the gods will be on her side? Maybe Medea has critical thinking on her side, insights into the politics of her position in the home and in the world? After all she has been othered as a foreigner and as a woman. But can critical thinking save her from injustice?

Daniels shows us the performance behind the masks of masculinity. We watch him prowl the circle of the stage as he aligns his posture and physical presence to play Creon, Aegeus and Jason. He is tall, pumped, shoulders back, chin up, powerful – a cross between superman and any man who has to survive a day at work. And when he plays Jason, his physicality changes again. We see a weak but vicious man, physically cowed by his articulate, beautiful wife. It’s all the more complicated because he’s fully conscious that he’s protecting his own interests above those of the mother of his children.

All the same, it is a visceral shock when Medea finally performs the gory deed in the basement of the family home. In this production she has no remorse for her filicide, which is a subversive decision. Okonedo’s Medea has plenty of other feelings, that’s for sure, expressed wordlessly in her eyes, her quivering body, in the snot and tears that gush from her.

The one extraordinary visual moment occurs after the sons are murdered. It begins to rain on stage. Crazed Jason and crazed blood-stained Medea stand under the rain, perhaps sent by the Gods. They are still fighting as rain falls. It will wash away the blood on Medea’s hands, but it will not cleanse the violence of patriarchy, not for Jason, or his sons, or their brutalised, loving mother.

​From "Medea at Soho Place: a stunning production that rains down on the patriarchy."
Sophie Okonedo’s formidable Medea is bound to become legendary in theatre history. Review by Deborah Levy, The New Statesman, March 23, 2023

Medea's Revenge

​Process Philosophy & Moral

Sophie Okonedo in Medea Photo credit Johan Persson

​Extreme Moral Choices

​Written almost 2,500 years ago in 431BCE Medea has survived as one of the most timeless works from classical theatre primarily because of the notorious manner in which Medea takes her revenge for being abandoned and banished – she kills her own two sons because it is the way she can hurt her husband most. Her horrific crime compels both repulsion and fascination, because Euripides forces us to consider how human beings can be provoked into the most extreme moral choices. His portrait of the psychological pressure that Medea suffers is one of the earliest examples of the dramatization of a character’s internal life, a focus that would become a defining feature of modern drama many centuries on.

Medea being a “barbarian” from a barbarian country is just one of the themes of Euripides’ play that resonates in our world today. Jeffer’s text is full of pithy lines that speak to concerns that persist over the ages: the prejudice against immigrants, the danger of arrogant nationalism, the unequal morality of marriage, or the gross injustice inherent in the assumptions of patriarchal primacy. As the play argues and demonstrates so clearly: “It is a bitter thing to be a woman.” It requires cunning and courage to survive.

- Douglas Schatz, play review in The Play Podcast

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​Medea by Euripides

Helen McCrory's Performance
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Decisions made in Rage
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We never make decisions on our own. Always, we are influenced by multiple factors from the past. As Whitehead puts it in Process and Reality, the "many become one" in the subjective immediacy of our experience, and that immediacy is an act of deciding how to respond to those influences. We develop subjective aims which guide our decisions, yielding, we hope, some kind of satisfaction relative to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. In these moments, we stand at a crossroads. The aims we develop may themselves be multiple, and we must choose among them. In the case of Medea, the aim that overwhelms her emotionally is to cause pain to her husband, Jason, who has betrayed her. But this does not occur in a vacuum.

Medea is an immigrant, she is alone, and she is profoundly affected by the societal pressures around her. Her decision to act on her desire for revenge is not a simple, isolated choice. It is the culmination of countless influences and forces from her past and present, converging in a single, intense moment of decision. As Whitehead would say, the "many become one" in her subjective experience — the weight of betrayal, her love for her children, her isolation as an immigrant, and the injustices she has endured as a woman under patriarchy all coalesce. Her concrescence is marked by an overwhelming emotional aim: to make Jason suffer for his betrayal.

Medea’s situation illustrates the complexity of decision-making in a world where multiple influences—cultural, personal, and societal—intersect. The aims she develops are themselves shaped by her past experiences and by the patriarchal structures that leave her feeling powerless. Her tragedy lies not only in the act of violence she commits but in the fact that the emotional aim she chooses is so deeply shaped by her pain and isolation. Her decision is both a personal one and a reflection of the broader forces that oppress her, demonstrating how difficult it can be to find satisfying, life-affirming aims in a world filled with injustice.
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Is she at fault? Yes, she is. She has committed a horrible crime, and she could have done otherwise. Her children are the victims. Is the society in which she finds herself at fault? Yes, it is. We cannot know if the society could have been different; it is hard to make judgments on what was possible in the past. But we can know that Medea's isolation and the injustices she faces, along with the betrayal of Jason, are wrong in a larger, more cosmic context. Is her rage against Jason justified? Yes, it is as well.

All of this is what makes a play like Medea so painful to watch and so morally troubling. It reveals the ambiguous contexts in which terrible decisions are made—decisions of which we may disapprove, but which we understand. This understanding is a form of empathy, feeling the feelings of others whom we judge wrong and comprehending their pain. In its own troubled way, this empathy is a form of love.

For my part, I cannot help but think that the living unity of the universe, the fellow sufferer who understands the pain of each and all, likewise knows this pain. This living unity, too, knows the ambiguities in life. Not only in the lives of individuals but in ultimate reality itself, there is tension, irresolution, ambiguity. There are tears of rage, This living unity, this divine consciousness, is shaped by the tears and the violence. They are part of the "many that become one" in the ongoing divine concrescence.

This, then, is the theological value of Medea. It reminds us that the complexity and tragedy of human decision-making echo the very ambiguities that exist in the heart of the universe itself. It means that we can never rest in simple moral judgements, neglectful of the horror people face, that lead them to do horrible things. Yes, we can never rest.

- Jay McDaniel