Medea by Euripides – Soho Place Theatre, London

Soho Place remains a strange theatre – an in-the-round jewel box concealed inside a weirdly bling office block in the new Elizabeth Line era Tottenham Court Road. Vast LED screens, gold-effect facades, low ceilings and high bar prices create an eerie setting, a non-place that belongs no more to London than to any other global city. All the more fortunate, then, that the theatre itself is the best small space in the West End, albeit with few competitors. As the setting for Dominic Cooke’s production of Medea, it could not be bettered. Viki Mortimer’s design consists of a tiled Mediterranean oval and a set of stairs that lead down to an unseen place below. Within the oval, the action takes place. Around it, consequences gather. Below, the worst deeds of all occur. Ben Daniels, playing all the male roles including Jason, Creon, Aegeus and the tutor to Medea’s sons, circles around the oval, approaching in slow motion as Medea speaks, while she is always trapped at the centre of the stage. Cooke also takes the ingenious decision to place the three actors playing the Women of Corinth, who form the Chorus, in the audience. Penny Layden, Jo McInnes and Amy Trigg interject from their seats, stand up and shout advice and eventually come up on stage, where they are reluctantly drawn into the unfolding horror.

As Medea, Sophie Okonedo is entirely herself, but also a woman whose revenge is to become what other people want her to be. The logic she applies to the decision to kill Jason’s offstage lover Glauce and then her two sons makes sense not just to her, but to us as well. She has been stripped of all power – used by Jason to climb the ladder, discarded for another woman and thrown out of Corinth with nothing. She could seek the protection of another man, Aegeus, but if everyone including her husband thinks she’s a witch and an evil influence, proving them right is the obvious course of action. Okonedo is mesmerising, fully inhabiting a role that develops agonising step by agonising step, as Medea strips away all her options until only one remains. Marion Bailey, in the Chorus-like role of the Nurse, expresses the horror at Medea’s actions which she herself is unable to feel.

Ben Daniels’ performance is just as good as that of his co-star, if entirely different. He switches roles with impressive ease, even drawing laughs for his camp Aegeus, while delivering a convincing brutal Creon and a Jason so self-centred he genuinely cannot understand what the problem is. Medea is simply there to do as he says, and trust him even as he destroys her. The test is by Robinson Jeffers, a classic translation first used by Judith Anderson and John Gielgud in 1947 which remains clear, direct and entirely modern. Cooke’s production is superb. The cauldron of ancient hatred he has set swirling behind the theatre’s glass walls brings some essential wildness to an urban landscape of surfaces. It is important that Soho Place continues to programme theatre that would not otherwise be seen outside the subsidised sector – such as Medea and As You Like It – which gives the West End some much-needed depth.