By Cindy Kim
Daily Texan Staff
In 1994, Susan Smith drowned her children in the name of love. Hailing from a history of damaging relationships with men, she had recently suffered a series of rejections from her ex-husband and new lover, who, in part, ended the relationship because of her two young sons. Rather than raising them in a hapless environment of financial woes and unstable emotional support, she strapped the boys into the backseat of her car and sent them to the bottom of a deep lake while they slept.
Needless to say, the crime drew sympathy for the innocent children, pity for their unknowing father and sharp disgust for Smith, who had desecrated the inviolable bond between mother and child. Speculations about Smith's motives ran the gamut from revenge against her ex-husband and his new lady friend, appeasement of her lover and plain insanity. But an overarching sentiment prevailed over competing theories — Susan Smith was undeniably evil.
A modern tale of lust, vengeance and infanticide as a result of modern moral decay? Nay. Trace the plight of the spurned lover, who forsakes all and receives nothing in return, at least 2,000 years back to the days of Euripides, a Greek poet and playwright. In an uncanny parallel, Euripides' tragedy Medea seems to script the very set of circumstances surrounding the Smith case.
Once impassioned by her love for Jason — of the Argonaut variety — Medea commits heinous acts of treason against her homeland and flees to Corinth, Jason's native soil. After three children and, one supposes, the standard ennui that sets in after the initial high of marriage, Jason abandons Medea and his brood to marry the naive and nubile daughter of the king. Medea, left in a sea of obligations, loneliness and despair, crafts the ultimate retribution for Jason's betrayal.
Scottish playwright Liz Lochhead's version of Medea, currently in its debut stateside performance at The Vortex Theater, puts a slight feminist twist on this centuries old story. Underscored by the solid direction of The Vortex's Lorella Loftus, Medea is no longer just a snubbed and inflamed paramour. She becomes the divorcee, the ex-girlfriend, the overweight wallflower and the anorexic waif. Loftus' Medea is every woman who has ever been discarded by society which, in some sense, is every woman in general. Her role yields a provoking recital, the memory of which indeed outlasts its performance.
The play slices Medea's role into four parts, each a different personality, if you will. Each woman has her distinct way of making sense of the mess in front of her, of devising ways to settle her score with Jason, and of expressing the emotional upheaval that tears through her conscience. Yet despite the internal disunity and external discord, Medea rises to the task and exacts acute revenge.
Anyone curious about the driving psychology behind "evil" women — women who defy the borders of femininity and womanhood — should see this play at once.
Medea will run at The Vortex Theater until Nov. 30.
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