After the riotous furore of the first half, Hotel Medea takes a turn for the worst in the second, says Ricky Sayeed.
At a theatre all-nighter, you’ve got to stay sober. You need to allow for a different kind of intoxication. Just surrender to a carefully mixed stimulus of people and events that, somewhere in the fog of 5 am, can get very confused.
Beginning just before midnight and rounding up seven hours later, Zecora Ura’s Hotel Medea tells the story of Euripides’ tragedy through a series of different scenarios. Jason marries barbarian princess Medea, and steals her tribe’s Golden Fleece. We’re guests at their beautifully designed wedding-turned-market-cum-ritual, and singing, dancing, even washing the actors’ naked bodies are the party games we can play. The emotionally generous cast helped us get into a bit of a state, if not quite a frenzy.
Later, Jason abandons Medea for his politically convenient mistress. This we discover by playing their kids, lying half awake in bunk beds as the grown-ups bicker, nearby but invisible. Framing an epic drama with that familiar childhood feeling is simply genius. The hot chocolate and lovely nannies didn’t hurt.
Unfortunately, what follows is less impressive, and lasts at least as long. Jason’s ambitions are represented as a shadowy presidential campaign. So just as we’re tiring, the audience are supposed to play his willing apparatchiks: we pose for pictures, attend a focus group, watch a “live documentary” and a hypnotic electoral ad. But throughout the show, the points scored against spin and corruption are as cheap as the politics they’re criticising. I wasn’t just tired, I was bored. It doesn’t help that Jason is played pretty one-note throughout the night.
We learn that Medea killed her husband’s other woman through an unconvincing cabaret, but later, in a stand out moment, this sun princess who has radiated energy all night lies passive as lackies arrange her body, clothes and make-up into the appearance of a bludgeoned rape victim. Is this true, or just another fake? Then suddenly she’s slaying her own children, and we’re got to lock ourselves in the pitch-black toilets and discuss our fears. We weren’t warmed up for these abrupt changes, and our participation didn’t feel satisfying.
Eventually, we find ourselves breakfasting, grandly, under a perfect blue sky. Actors and participants swap jokes and jam on toast, share anecdotes and bowls of hot, sweet mugunzá. Wired by lack of sleep, we all kept performing, just a little.
Hotel Medea runs at Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre until 11th August. You can experience Zero Hour Market, which is just the first act of Hotel Medea on Thursdays from 8pm.
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