This is Medea like you have never seen it before. Director Satoshi Miyagi takes an ancient masterpiece, tweaks it, paints it in fresh colours, and creates a jewel that dazzles. This is no mere telling of a story, it is an experience.
Performed in Japanese with English subtitles, the play is set in a restaurant in Meiji era Japan. It is a time of wide-ranging changes from government policies to education systems to trade. A group of male patrons in the restaurant has decided to perform Medea. Each character will be played by two people – a male “speaker” who will deliver the lines, and a female “mover” who will act them out. The female staff of the restaurant present themselves to be picked for the roles. They appear on stage dressed in kimonos of the same shade, brown bags on their heads, an enlarged photograph of themselves hanging on their necks – a complete deletion of identity and agency.
The parts are given out and the men, dressed uniformly in black and white, settle in a line with their scripts. The characters in elaborate costumes emerge one by one from behind a screen painted with Japanese street scenes. Hidden by the screen are musicians playing an array of percussion instruments. As the men speak the lines, the women act them out in a style rooted in Japanese theatre, with dramatic poses and exaggerated movements. The women are puppets, voiceless and free only to move according to the dictates of the male voices.
Given the format of mover and speaker, the play is dialogue heavy. At any given moment, there is a rapid torrent of words. And for every few sentences said in Japanese, the subtitles only give you one. But that does not impede the experience; this is a story we already know. On the contrary, for those who do not understand Japanese, the male voices become a moving, writhing backdrop of emotions.
In this version, Medea – played by Micari, and voiced by Kazunori Abe – is portrayed as Asian, a foreigner in Greece. (She wears a Korean hanbok, placing her as a foreigner in Japan as well – a nod to the Meiji period’s imperial ambitions.) She knows the Greeks are wary of her, they dislike her foreignness. Her husband Jason has chosen to marry the princess of Corinth, King Creon’s daughter, and Medea has been sentenced to exile.
Even as the play of the movers and speakers proceeds, you see one of the men in the restaurant drag a woman away. In the foreground, a messenger describes to Medea the gruesome details of the death of the king and princess. Behind the screen, the lights come on and we see in silhouette the man forcing himself on the woman. There is a struggle, there is confusion, and soon he is struggling to breath as the woman’s scarf winds tightly around his neck. The drums beat in a frenzy, matching the energy of the messenger’s voice.
The last five minutes of the play are transformational. The screen rolls back to reveal an all-woman band playing the instruments. In a crescendo of loud percussive music (the score by Hiroko Tanakawa is a character by itself), the women take over the stage, discard their trappings, and turn the narrative on its head. It is a recapturing of agency, of autonomy. Like music, costume design by Kayo Takahashi Deschene plays a crucial role, marking the lines between the controlled and the controller, emblematic of both oppression and rebellion.
This is a story of a woman wronged, performed by a group of women controlled by men. This is a story of a woman’s revenge, told by a group of women who eventually come to own the narrative and avenge themselves. The fabric of this play has so many layers, you will be peeling it for days.
Reviewer: Savitha Venugopal
Reviewed: 18th June 2025
North West End UK Rating: