Thoroughly Modern Medea
Review of the Oberon Classics paperback edition (April 16, 2016) adapted by Rachel Cusk from the Ancient Greek language original (432 BC).

Jason: Look, you should be trying to find someone yourself. You're still an attractive woman.
Medea: Still?
Jason: For your age, yes. You should look on the internet. That's how everyone does it these days.
[his phone pings and he reads it then texts a reply.]
How's the writing going?

Rachel Cusk's 2015 Medea is merged with the (currently) 990 editions of Euripides' play, but it is nothing at all like most of those translations and adaptations from the ancient Greek. Cusk's lead character is a modern day screenwriter, her Jason is an actor who had a breakthrough role thanks to a script by Medea, Jason is divorcing Medea in order to marry a younger woman from a rich family to further promote his career, the Aegeus is a film producer who will arrange a future production of a Medea script, Medea's new movie is a tell-all which will destroy Jason and bring about the downfall of his new family. Medea does not directly murder anyone.

It is all obviously inspired by Euripides original plot, but the text and situations are all modern day and the fates of the characters are not as in the original. 5 gossipy women are the chorus, they barely interact with Medea. There are 2 somewhat bratty boy children. Glauke (the younger woman) gets a rash from the jewellery which Medea passes on to Jason, the Nurse and the Tutor comment on the action as before. A house cleaner character is introduced to the plot as a completely new commentator on the action. The messenger character describes the off-stage action as before.

See poster at https://images.almeida.co.uk/uploads/2022/12/Untitled.png?resize=1590%2C636&...
Poster for the Almeida Theatre 2015 production. Image sourced from the Almeida Theatre.

This was a thoroughly interesting interpretation of the play in which much of the suspense was the anticipation of how is Cusk going to modernize the situation without the horror of the original's ending. Really the most horrific aspect was the promotional material for the Almeida Theatre production. This was somewhat hidden in the poster above, but had a grotesque reveal in the cover of the 2nd print edition:
See book cover at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
Image sourced from Goodreads.

Theatre Reviews
Magic in its Modernism: Rachel Cusk's Marvellous New Medea for the Almeida Greeks season by Charlotte Valori at Operissima, October 1, 2015.

Trivia and Links
There is an excerpted scene from the Almeida Theatre production with Kate Fleetwood as Medea which you can see here. Starting with the talk of a bicycle, you'll realize that this version of the play is set in modern times.

Rachel Cusk wrote an opinion piece for The Telegraph at the time of her version's staging. It is behind a paywall but you can see the headline and the beginning at Rachel Cusk: 'Medea is not psychotic, she's a realist.', September 30, 2015. ( )

Machemer & Collier's Medea
Review of the Oxford University Press (OUP) paperback (August 10, 2006) translated by Georgia Ann Machemer and set in verse by Michael Collier from the Ancient Greek original Μήδεια (431 BC).

I went down the Medea rabbit hole after reading Laura Alcoba's Through the Forest (2024), a recent translation of a French language non-fiction novel which also involves maternal filicide and in which an extended story of the Medea mythology is included. So I then picked up Liz Lochhead's 2023 updated Scots adaptation Medea and a basic version in Dover Thrift Editions' Medea (which uses Rex Warner's 1944 translation). I looked for a scholarly translation and Collier/Machemer's version in OUP's Greek Tragedy in New Translations series looked ideal.

The OUP edition provides a very extensive Introduction (29 pages), Text Notes (26 pages) & Glossary (6 pages) in addition to the play translation. All of these provide for excellent background and context for the play's original performance and reception in Ancient Athens. That included the Medea mythology providing a historical basis for the enmity between Corinth (past of the Spartan confederacy) and Athens in the then Peloponnesian War. The shock of various other elements in the play provides a basis for understanding why Euripides came in 3rd (i.e. last) in that year's theatre competition.

See drawing at https://www.whitman.edu/theatre/theatretour/glossary/glossary%20images/deus.ex.m...
A speculative drawing of the use of a crane in the Deus ex machina scenes of Ancient Greek theatre. Image sourced from the Ancient Theatre Archive Glossary at Whitman.edu.

I also went down a further rabbit hole in the investigation of the Deus ex machina appearance of Medea at the conclusion of the play. Normally it would only be Gods lowered from the crane machine in order to provide a last-minute miraculous solution to what would otherwise be an insolvable plot. Medea's appearance in a chariot loaded with dead bodies and pulled by dragons makes it seem more likely that she was instead simply on the roof of the skene (the building at the back of the stage in Ancient Greek theatre).

See illustration at https://i0.wp.com/artofnarrative.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/medea-escaping-1...
An illustrated representation of Medea's appearance at the conclusion of the play. Image sourced from The Art of Narrative.

I'm not done with Medea yet, as Rachel Cusk's adaptation Medea (2015) also looks intriguing, even based on the cover alone.

Trivia and Links
Some of the earlier English language translations of Medea are in the Public Domain. You can read several of the 19th century translations online at Wikisource. ( )

A Basic Medea
Review of the Dover Thrift Editions paperback (2022) of the Dover Publications original (1993) of the John Lane: The Bodley Head hardcover The Medea of Euripides (1944) translated by Rex Warner from the Ancient Greek language original Μήδεια (431 BC).

I read this 1944 translation in parallel with reading Liz Lochhead's adaptation Medea (2023) for the National Theatre of Scotland. I wanted to have a basic comparison in order to see how far Lochhead differed from the original. The Dover Thrift edition was ideal for that purpose, but it provided no background information and only a very few brief footnotes to explain some references in the text.

I'm also planning on reading a more recent translation in a more scholarly edition. The Oxford University Press's Medea (2006) with a translation by Michael Collier and Georgia Ann Machemer looks like an ideal candidate for that.

Trivia and Links
Some of the earlier English language translations of Medea are in the Public Domain. You can read several of the 19th century translations online at Wikisource. ( )

Tendo por base um antigo mito grego, a Medeia de Euripides (480-406 a.C.) narra a vigança da altiva Medeia contra Jasão, depois que este - após ter conquistado o Velo de Ouro com sua ajuda - a rejeita para desposar a filha do rei de Corinto.

De sumo, cito lo dicho por el sirviente en la traducción de Antonio Melero Bellido:

No es ésta la primera vez en que constato que la fortuna humana es como una sombra y no temo afirmar que aquellos que parecen sabios y profundos pensadores incurren en las más solemnes tonterías. No hay mortal que sea feliz. La fortuna, en su fluir constante, hace, unas veces, más afortunados a unos y, otras, a otros, pero feliz, nadie lo es.

De aquí deducimos la profunda sensibilidad poética de Eurípides, al dejar que el sirviente al volver de haber presenciado la trágica muerte de Corintio y Creúsa, se debata por las penurias de los hombres, al no entender cómo a veces nos debatimos en trivialidades y vivencias llenas de vanidad, que por inútiles, no son capaces (en su opinión) de hacernos describir como seres que alguna vez, pudieron siquiera ser felices.

Lo trágico de esta idea, puede ser incluso más potente que el llanto desconsolado de los hijos de Medea al ser asesinados por su madre, mientras el coro impotente, no puede hacer nada. La sororidad quedó rota, pero qué importa. Los niños, inocentes, mueren sin tener culpa de ser hijos de. Sin embargo, la humanidad, los hombres, esta especie de mamíferos alzados en osadía al papel de dioses según el tiempo y las acciones de las que incurrimos, no podemos sino sentirnos avergonzados y desesperanzados aún más por lo que expone el sirviente, dejando claro, que cualquier razón que pueda dar sentido a nuestra existencia es un claro alivio a la estupidez de preguntas que otros seres nunca van a tener que hacerse. Y podemos pensar, ¿ser feliz? ¿para qué preguntarnos por eso?, es preciso vivir, pero la problemática se advierte ante el desconocimiento absoluto ante lo descontrolado del porvenir. Es por ello, que no sería justo cercar esta posibilidad con ideas estúpidas, pues nadie debería ser tan osado de procurarse juez de su destino, que ante la vastedad poética de Eurípides, nos encierra en un anticlímax donde la injusticia se nutre de un acto cruel salvado por la fantasía y la magia, esto es, aquello que no podemos controlar, desdichados por las muchas tragedias que vivimos a lo largo de nuestras conscientes vidas insertos en este mundo.

Quizá, por eso, la Medea de Eurípides sea tan actual y tan poderosa en su constante lucha por el control de algo que en vez de convertirnos en dioses, nos convierte, muy a nuestro pesar en monstruos. Por lo que pensar en el superhombre de Nietzsche se pueda hacer tan ridículo como trágico, como en aquella película de Hitchcock, donde una soga convino en hacer muy poco favor a un inocente que fue asesinado por simples ideas creadas por nosotros, una (en Medea) la dignidad y la otra, el creernos mejores que nuestra propia naturaleza. ( )