There have been some terrific versions of Medea in recent years, from Helen McCrory at the National in 2014 to Kate Fleetwood at the Almeida in 2015 to Adura Onashile in Michael Boyd’s production for the National Theatre of Scotland at the Edinburgh International Festival last summer. Now there is a new Medea on the block: Sophie Okonedo takes on the most challenging of roles as the outsider abandoned by her husband in a revival by Dominic Cooke, which also stars Ben Daniels as the men in Medea’s life. With every one of them determined to ensure that they are the winners in a terrible game of love, loss and revenge. But are they underestimating Medea?
Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels return to the West End to star in Robinson Jeffers’ adaptation of Euripides’ Medea, directed by Dominic Cooke. Sophie Okonedo brings her visceral, mercurial brilliance to literature’s most titanic female protagonist, whose complexity and contradictions have kept audiences on the edge of their seats, unable to look away, for almost 2,500 years. Medea tells the story of a woman laid bare by grief and rage, and her terrible quest for revenge against the men who have abandoned her. Medea sees Dominic Cooke reuniting with long-term collaborators’ Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels, most recently with BBC’s The Hollow Crown - Wars of the Roses, in addition to working together across multiple stage productions since the 1990s. Produced by Fictionhouse Limited, Nica Burns and Kate Pakenham Productions.