Medea

The successful doctor Anna is trying to organise her life again after her compulsory admission to a mental institute. After a failed attempt to poison her husband Lucas and her ensuing psychiatric recovery, she is determined to reunite her family. Prepared to forgive Lucas his affair with younger Clara, she is eager to do whatever it takes to build a new future together. But it soon transpires that her expectations aren’t shared by the people around her. She stands to lose everything she holds dear: her husband, her children, her career. The rebirth she yearns for deteriorates into a descent into the dark recesses of her mind.

Stone rewrites Medea into a recognizable, contemporary context. His characters are people of flesh and blood, successful forty-somethings with a career and a happy family life. The director retains the contours of the story, but poses the question who the old Greek heroes would be in our present society. He works with actors based on improvisations and in this way develops a completely new text alive with double layers and tragic misunderstandings.

His dialogue is razor-sharp and at times utterly hilarious, but with emotions and violence constantly raging underneath the surface.

Medea was the first play Australian director Simon Stone wrote and directed for ITA. He later directed Husbands and Wives (by Woody Allen), assembled themes and motifs from Ibsen's work into Ibsen House, and was inspired by Herman Heijermans's Op hoop van zegen for Flight 49.