Medea

“To mortal man, how great a scourge is love,” is one of countless ingenious lines that adorn “The Children” at the Theatre @ Boston Court. Michael Elyanow's stunning riff on the Medea myth rips Euripides into current-day context, and rams its meanings into our brainpans. Beginning before a Stygian drape that masks designer François-Pierre Couture's jagged-wood set, an aptly named Man-In-Slacks and Woman-In-Sundress (Sonny Valicenti and Paige Lindsey White, both beyond praise)

“To mortal man, how great a scourge is love,” is one of countless ingenious lines that adorn “The Children” at the Theatre @ Boston Court. Michael Elyanow's stunning riff on the Medea myth rips Euripides into current-day context, and rams its meanings into our brainpans. Beginning before a Stygian drape that masks designer François-Pierre Couture's jagged-wood set, an aptly named Man-In-Slacks and Woman-In-Sundress (Sonny Valicenti and Paige Lindsey White, both beyond praise)

NEW YORK -- Of all the high-profile attempts to open Broadway's sleepy eyes to far-flung artistry, nothing this season compares to the daring, the intimate theatricality and revelatory humanity of Fiona Shaw in "Medea." Forget all assumed familiarity with Euripides' tragedy or the impulse to dismiss infanticide as, well, perhaps a holiday downer.

If it had not caught the attention of a handful of important readers, Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones" would most likely have quietly faded into obscurity; many worthy books do. Now, however, this novel about a poor Mississippi family in the weeks leading up to 2005's Hurricane Katrina has a prominent place in bookstores and boasts the gold medallion that comes with winning the 2011 National Book Award. Book awards are marvelously idiosyncratic. While major film and music awards are based on the votes of a large group - meaning there is a general consensus or popularity - book awards are frequently selected by just a few people.

One can only hope for plenty of camp from anything called "Medea: The Musical," and this gay-themed romp at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre certainly delivers, though not without limitations. Director-writer John Fisher has crafted an energetic song-and-dance treatment of the jilted Corinthian Queen who turns to infanticide as payback for her husband's disloyalty.

UCLA Live will kick off its 2009-10 performing arts season with a world premiere that also represents the first original production to be created by the UCLA Live series: a new interpretation of the Euripides classic "Medea," starring Annette Bening and directed by Croatia's Lenki Udovicki. In an interview Wednesday, series artistic and executive director David Sefton said that despite the fact that Udovicki does most of her theater and opera directing abroad, she and her husband, Croatian actor Rade Serbedzija, are based in Los Angeles and Udovicki was eager to do a production here.

LOCAL 'Medea' Few roles are as ferociously inviting to powerhouse actresses as Medea, the title character of Euripides' ancient masterpiece who sets out to teach her two-timing husband, Jason, a lesson he surely will never forget. Essaying the role in UCLA Live's production, directed by Lenka Udovicki, is Annette Bening, who will get to exercise her more menacing muscles. No stranger to dramatic malice, Bening won Oscar nominations for her portrayals of chilly connivers in "The Grifters" and "American Beauty."

If it had not caught the attention of a handful of important readers, Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones" would most likely have quietly faded into obscurity; many worthy books do. Now, however, this novel about a poor Mississippi family in the weeks leading up to 2005's Hurricane Katrina has a prominent place in bookstores and boasts the gold medallion that comes with winning the 2011 National Book Award. Book awards are marvelously idiosyncratic. While major film and music awards are based on the votes of a large group - meaning there is a general consensus or popularity - book awards are frequently selected by just a few people.

Theater numbers-The reservation number for "Medea" at Celebration Theatre is (310) 289-2999. The number for "Weights," at the Actors' Gang is (213) 628-2772. Incorrect numbers ran April 8 in Sunday Calendar.

Tim Kelly is said to be America's most-published playwright. He is also its most generic, his specialty being transferring public-domain classics into dramatic form. In "No Opera at the Op'ry House Tonight," he tackles that venerable perennial, the old-fashioned mellerdrammer. The Camino Real Playhouse decided to tackle it too, but under Tom Scott's unstructured direction, it never quite gets back up on its feet again.

Euripides' "Medea" taps into primal emotions that frighten and fascinate us in equal measure. Try as you may to interpret the tale of a wife who, having sacrificed everything for her husband, murders their children to punish him for his unfaithfulness, there's a mystery, a strangeness at the heart of this shocking crime that is ultimately irreducible. That strangeness is taken to a new level in UCLA Live's whirligig production, which opened Wednesday at the Freud Playhouse with an unsteady Annette Bening in the title role.

The wail plays like a primitive call to prayer in some undetermined Middle Eastern city. The sound is low, primal, an almost guttural cry -- and it takes a moment to realize that the noise is actually human, that it's emanating from a corner of the womb-like rehearsal room deep in the bowels of UCLA's Royce Hall. The source is unexpected -- a faceless woman slung up against a wall, a scarlet scarf covering her head. When the woman takes the stage, she is no longer crying but almost anesthetized -- blinded -- by pain.

LOCAL 'Medea' Few roles are as ferociously inviting to powerhouse actresses as Medea, the title character of Euripides' ancient masterpiece who sets out to teach her two-timing husband, Jason, a lesson he surely will never forget. Essaying the role in UCLA Live's production, directed by Lenka Udovicki, is Annette Bening, who will get to exercise her more menacing muscles. No stranger to dramatic malice, Bening won Oscar nominations for her portrayals of chilly connivers in "The Grifters" and "American Beauty."

UCLA Live will kick off its 2009-10 performing arts season with a world premiere that also represents the first original production to be created by the UCLA Live series: a new interpretation of the Euripides classic "Medea," starring Annette Bening and directed by Croatia's Lenki Udovicki. In an interview Wednesday, series artistic and executive director David Sefton said that despite the fact that Udovicki does most of her theater and opera directing abroad, she and her husband, Croatian actor Rade Serbedzija, are based in Los Angeles and Udovicki was eager to do a production here.

Scheming seductress, scorned wife, vengeful lover: The tragic figure of Medea carries all the worst labels applied to women but can't be contained by any of them. Dutch ensemble Dood Paard's cerebral, sly telling of her fierce and bloody tale plays through the weekend at Macgowan Little Theater as part of UCLA's International Theatre Festival.

Euripides fans -- and we know you are legion -- rejoice. Two worthy productions of "Medea" are running within easy traveling distance of Los Angeles. Directorially speaking, the interpretations are radically different, but both feature superlative casts, cogent translations and the kind of emotional truthfulness guaranteed to give a genuine cathartic charge. David Bridel takes the more classical approach in his staging at Cal Rep.

How do you solve a problem like "Medea"? The approach to parenting in Euripides' drama is long out of fashion and so, for that matter, are its stilted construction and chest-thumping histrionics. Despite modernist Band-Aids applied around the periphery, the central stumbling blocks remain unconquered in a Knightsbridge Theatre revival that rarely rises above community theater standards.

"Medea, Queen of Colchester," Sledgehammer Theatre's world premiere modernized revival of the classic Greek tale of a scorned woman's revenge, is burdened with extra issues and erratic acting but remains compelling and provocative. In Greek mythology and Euripides' play, Medea loves Jason so much that she betrays her family and homeland to save his life and flee with him. She bears him two children, but he then forsakes her to marry the daughter of King Creon.

The day after the American military campaign began in Iraq, Medea Benjamin -- her pink dress soaked in ersatz blood, a plastic baby's foot dangling from a pink ribbon around her neck -- was leading an antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C. Back home in San Francisco, husband Kevin Danaher and daughter Arlen, 22, were part of the crowd raging through the streets, shutting down businesses and snarling traffic.