Name: Medea
Start: 2023-02-10
End: 2023-04-22
Location: Soho Place

[boxoffice] Desktop Logo

Box Office

BoxOffice favicon

WL Terms

Terms and conditions

WL Privacy policy

Privacy policy

UK WL Musicals

Musicals

UK WL Plays

Plays

UK WL Family Theatre

Family Theatre

UK WL Deals & Special Offers

Deals & Special Offers

UK WL All Shows

All Shows

WL - All Attraction - LON

All Attractions

WL UK Info Links

INFO

FAQs

Contact us

Boxoffice Help Links

HELP

Boxoffice footer links

New WL Privacy Policy for UK Retailers

New WL Cookies for UK Retailers

New WL Terms and Conditions  for UK Retailers

BoxOffice Legacy url to Lion King

BoxOffice Old URL to Phantom of the opera

Box Office Redirect from old  musical page to new

Spitting Image - BO Redirect

2:22 A Ghost Story Box Office Redirect - 23977, 26645 to 28257

Tower Bridge - London - Box Office Redirect

Cutty Sark - London - Box Office Redirect

Thorpe Park Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Alton Towers Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Warwick Castle Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Madame Tussauds Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Shrek's Adventure Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Chessington Redirect - TT+BO - LON

London Dungeon Redirect - TT+BO - LON

London Eye River Cruise Redirect - TT+BO - LON

London Eye Standard & River Cruise Redirect - TT+BO - LON

London Eye Fast Track Redirect - TT+BO - LON

London Eye Standard Redirect - TT+BO - LON

British Music Experience Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Buckingham Palace State Rooms Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Chelsea stadium Tours Redirect - TT+BO - LON

City Cruises Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Hillsborough Castle Gardens Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Kensington Palace Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Palace of Holyroodhouse Redirect - TT+BO - LON

St Paul's Cathedral Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Thames Rockets Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Tower Bridge Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Tower of London Redirect - TT+BO - LON

Windsor Castle Redirect - TT+BO - LON

WL Redirect - Ballet

Magic Mike Live - BO Redirect - 23302 to 16563

ALL - PDP - Short description - Template

BO/GS - PDP - Experience - Running time - Template

BO/GS - PDP - Experience - Venue - Template

BO/GS - PDP - Entry price - Template

BO/GS - PDP - Age recommendation - Template

BO/GS - PDP - Tickets - Template

Buy tickets for [Product Name] in [City]. [Sales Message]

[Product Name] Tickets | Box Office

BO/GS - PDP - Show - Running time - Template

BO/GS - PDP - Show - Venue - Template

Buy tickets for [Product Name], [Venue]. [Sales Message]

[Headline Title] | Book Tickets | Box Office

Owned

UK WL Ballet & Opera

Ballet & Opera

WL Nav with Ballet & Opera

GWR Button Logo 01

GWR Nav Link to GWR site

Buy train tickets

WL Nav - GWR

WL Nav - The Times

WL Nav - Attractions Included

Christmas

WL UK Nav

TT - All Shows - London

Experience London's vibrant theatre scene with tickets to new and classic plays and musicals on and off the West End. Get tickets to watch the magic unfold.

Last-minute theatre tickets for London shows

Grab last-minute theatre tickets for London shows at the best prices and enjoy exclusive access to our Lottery and Rush tickets for West End shows on TodayTix.

Last Minute Theatre Tickets | London & West End Shows | TodayTix

London All Shows

Book last-minute theatre tickets for London Shows at the best prices, and get exclusive access to our Lottery and Rush tickets.

Last-Minute Theatre Tickets | London Shows | West End Shows | TodayTix

London Shows

Explore West End shows, book last minute theatre tickets, and more

Discover London

TodayTix App Home - LON

London All Shows Image

Latest London Insider Posts

London Theatre is the oldest and first site dedicated to West End theatre and Off-West End shows. Catch up on the latest West End news and London theatre reviews, and book London theatre tickets today. 

London Theatre Home Page - London

London Theatre - Musicals, Plays, Drama, and Fringe

The ultimate London Theatre Guide. Book theatre tickets for the top musicals and plays in the West End, together with theatre in London news and show reviews. 

London Theatre Tickets | West End News | LondonTheatre.co.uk

London

Empty Search Results Page (to stop search errors)

Search Results

London Tile Image

London Home Page (TT Home)

Get the best prices on theatre tickets today in New York, London and more. Read reviews. Win exclusive lottery or rush tickets. Download our app.

TodayTix | Theatre Tickets to Musicals, Plays, Broadway, More

London Nav Links [NEW]

More shows

Venues in London

London Home Page (WL)

WL LON Home Newsletter Image

Genre: Play

Medea  - LON - Box Office

JP Medea2023JP 34093-Edit

Medea2

MH Medea-141

Medea3

MH Medea-131

Medea1

Medea

Medea-480-x-720-TTG

It’s the most unthinkable act in theatre – and yet given a kind of horrifying reasonableness in Dominic Cooke’s brooding production of Euripides’ *[Medea](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/27552-medea)*. Using the intimate, in-the-round confines of London’s most exciting new venue, he ensures we are both witness to and complicit in a domestic tragedy (a husband’s betrayal; a wife and mother’s terrible revenge), although both the amphitheatre-like shape and Sophie Okonedo’s spellbinding performance also give it a mythic quality.

Cooke’s 90-minute, modern-dress staging begins with Jason knocking over a table and chairs and dragging them into the aisles – casual destruction of their home. He has left Medea, and their young sons, so that he can make a more strategic marriage: one to the daughter of King Creon. Having a Black actress playing Medea (who is labelled a “foreigner” and a “barbarian”) makes the description of that golden-haired princess particularly striking.

Power is at the root of this tale. Medea – who was once herself a princess, and a descendent of a sun god – sacrificed hers to help Jason succeed. Now, she is alone and friendless; she betrayed her own family and country for him. Jason seeks power through his remarriage, and seems to resent that he ever needed Medea, while Creon fears her and uses his royal power to banish her: at the start of the play, she learns that she has been cast into exile. If she protests, she’ll be branded jealous or mad. As Okonedo spits out: “It is a bitter thing to be a woman.”

Cooke uses the 1946 text by American poet Robinson Jeffers, which is a wonderful mix of lyrical and wryly colloquial. In parts, this is a surprisingly funny production – one that plays interesting games by making its characters so aware of being watched. After Creon pitilessly demands Medea depart, he pastes on a fake smile for the crowd and protests that he’s “not a tyrant”. Medea hardly needs condemn Jason to us – she simply lets him hang himself with lines like “I must look forward to younger children”, then watches for our reaction.

Our involvement is heightened by having Medea’s nurse (an excellent Marion Bailey) directly addressing us, and by placing three cast members (Jo McInnes, Amy Trigg and Penny Layden) in the audience. They are women of Corinth, and this voyeurism is apparently expected – Medea observes that there are no secrets in Greece. Jeffers’s text is alert to the colonial echoes here: Jason arrogantly assumes he’s done Medea a favour by bringing her to a more “civilised” land; Medea turns that on its head by sneering that these civilised people will engage love for gold, and using that knowledge in her revenge plot.

Cooke also makes the very effective choice to have Ben Daniels play all the men in the story – so making it clear that this is Medea versus not just Jason, but the patriarchy. Daniels shape-shifts impressively with the aid of a satchel or a jacket, added to his military fatigues-like combat trousers and boots, going from the boys’ concerned tutor to an uptight Creon, brutish, blinkered Jason, and, in stark contrast with the latter, a super-camp Aegeus.

Opposite them, Okonedo is initially an exhausted, abandoned woman in a long-sleeved top and baggy skirt. We hear her before we see her: a voice from the floor below (a partially hidden staircase winds up onto the stage) declaring that death is her wish. But, as more indignities are heaped upon her, her desires shift from suicide to justice. It’s not with hysteria but with eerie calm that she decides upon the most painful retribution (killing Jason’s children) and asks Aegeus, not once but twice, “Do you not think that such men ought to be punished?”

It’s a riveting performance by Okonedo, who seems to transform completely – not just through a costume change (into a funereal black gown), or because Medea embraces her supernatural gifts (which were once valued; now, she’s at the centre of a literal witch hunt). We are lured into her way of thinking, only to be shocked back into reality by the sight of her two innocent children – introduced here slurping ice cream cones – and by the agony of Bailey’s nurse in having to recount the grisly fate of Jason’s bride.

Given the intensity and intimacy of the performances, and how the central drama is already enhanced by the reactions of the onlookers (plus striking lighting by Neil Austin), it feels like overkill to add alarms and helicopters to Gareth Fry’s busy soundscape, and in particular the clichéd crutch of an actual storm. The most harrowing moments here are the quieter ones, as we come to understand the inexorable logic of the play, cold and hard as the stone floor in Vicki Mortimer’s raw design – and our role as helpless witnesses, doomed to watch it reach its bloody climax.

*Medea is at Soho Place through 22 April. Book Medea tickets on London Theatre.*

[![LT - CTA - 250](//images.ctfassets.net/6pezt69ih962/1t6HRGmhlYl70k6PmR0mOZ/3caac861bc1d4233cd7844652c925623/LT-CTA-250.png)](https://ticket.londontheatre.co.uk/booking/calendar?product_id=27552&content_product_id=27552&venue_id=54939502)

*Photo credit: Ben Daniels and Sophie Okonedia in Medea at Soho Place (Photo by Johan Persson)*

'Medea' review – Sophie Okonedo takes on the patriarchy in this spellbinding staging

Medea - LT - 1200

Medea - LON

Read our four-star review of *Medea* at Soho Place, starring Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels, playing through 22 April. Get *Medea* tickets on London Theatre.

Soho Place opened in the West End in 2022. The interior includes a curved auditorium, known as “the hug”, and can change configuration for every production. No seat will be further than six rows from the stage. The Soho Place theatre is owned by Nica Burns.

The inaugural production, *Marvellous*, followed the life of local hero Neil Baldwin. *As You Like It* was the first in-house production. Rose Ayling-Ellis made her West End debut as Celia. *Photo credit: Tim Soar and AHMM*

Soho Place - LON

Soho Place

Buy tickets for Medea at the @sohoplace in London. Find official theatre tickets to Plays with Box Office.

Medea Tickets | Box Office

Soho Place - LON - 644x322px

Dominic Cooke directs Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels in a visionary adaptation of *Medea* at Soho Place. 

Sophie Okonedo plays the female protagonist. She brings her visceral, mercurial brilliance to the role, showing the power of women. Okonedo’s longtime collaborator Ben Daniels plays Jason. Together, they’ve starred in *Haunted Child* at the Royal Court. Now, they lead the powerful ancient Greek drama, a play that, according to London Theatre "spellbindingly takes on the patriarchy." 

The *Medea* play sees the title character transform from a lover into a destroyer of love. At first, Medea marries Jason, the leader of the Argonauts.After years of marriage and raising two children — Mermerus and Pheres — Jason leaves Medea for Glauce, a younger princess. In a blazing reaction, Medea sets out on a quest for revenge against the men who abandoned her. The timeless play explores themes revenge, justice, and the consequences of betrayal, all with a focus on women.

### When was *Medea* written? 

Euripides wrote *Medea*. It's unknown when it was written, but early performances date as far back as 431 BC. The 20th-century American poet Robinson Jeffers adapted *Medea* to successful acclaim — Okonedo and Daniels star in a revival of the Robinson Jeffers version.

Medea - LON - London Theatre

What could turn a woman from a lover into a destroyer of love? When she's laid bare by grief and rage, there's only one thing for it — revenge. Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels lead a powerful adaptation of *Medea* at Soho Place this spring. Get *Medea* tickets on London Theatre today.

Don’t get in Medea’s way. She can plot her own revenge, and leave devastating trails of death and destruction. However, the *Medea* play isn't all about heartache. There's tender moments of love, betrayal, and the struggle for power. In Robinson Jeffers's adaptation, *Medea* blends the ancient and the modern for a forward-thinking look into modern civilisation.

## What to Watch For:

- Sophie Okonedo plays Medea. The Tony-winning actress is best known for starring in *A Raisin in the Sun*. She also gave an Oscar-nominated performance in the 2004 film *Hotel Rwanda*.
- Ben Daniels plays Jason. Okonedo and Daniels previously appeared in *Haunted Child* at the Royal Court.
- The ancient Greek play dates back as early as 431 BC. Euripides is one of three ancient Greek tragedy playwrights whose texts survived in full.

Medea Tickets

About Medea

Age