AN: Spoilers ahead!
Recently, Brandeis presented “Argonautika”, directed by Dalya Lessem Elnecave and written by Mary Zimmerman in partnership with “Hold Thy Peace”. It is, as the name suggests, a recreation of the ancient Greek tale of Jason and the Argonauts, wherein the eponymous Jason ventures to retrieve the golden fleece. After viewing their production on March 20, I was left conflicted—it was a play with as many good parts as bad.
Let us begin at the beginning—not the beginning of the play, mind you, but the beginning of the experience—the moment I walked through the Springold theater doors. Now, I had never really explored Springold before, and had no idea where to go to see the play. After following a few signs and checking the map, I eventually found my way to the main theater area—which was empty and dark. A few more minutes of wandering, and eventually asking someone for directions, led me to a smaller side room where the play actually took place. Seating was two rows of plastic chairs on either side of the “stage”, and the room itself was remarkable only in how unremarkable a place it was to host a play. This location was the first decision I found questionable. Now, to be clear, I have no idea why this place was chosen. Maybe it was for purely logistical reasons. But the pamphlet we were handed at the door listed “nontraditional staging” as an essential element of the play, which leads me to believe it was intentional, and I can’t say I approve. The plastic chairs were uncomfortable seating for a two hour long show, and the lack of any elevation meant it was, at times, difficult to see the actors. In addition to all this, there was a projector that kept randomly turning on and off throughout the show, displaying nothing. I honestly have no idea what was going on there, but if there is a rogue projector on the loose in the room, that is an issue that should have been addressed before the show began.
With that out of the way, let me move on to the show itself. I think the best place to start is with the two actors Jateja Spriggs (’28) and Eva Sanborn (’26), who’s most impactful roles were as Hercules and Medea respectively. I want to discuss them both because I believe they were hands down the best actors there, and really brought the whole thing to life, but also because I think the contrast between their performances highlights the show’s greatest failing—tone.
Jateja as Hercules (one of Jason’s crew members) was dynamic, funny and entirely willing to extend the play out beyond the boundaries of the stage, often involving the audience in her performance. She was incredibly high energy throughout the whole thing, and, to my eyes, loved the performance and the acting with a passion that was really visible. She would never hesitate to crack jokes or lighten the mood, and even in the serious scenes, she carried with her a certain pomp that made it hard to take things too seriously. Her every word and expression seemed larger than life, a theatrical exaggeration. Eva as Medea (the princess of Colchis), on the other hand, was heart-wrenching. Her story, at first glance, seems a sweet one—enamored by the foreign hero, the princess aids him in his quest and the two steal away in the night to marry. Eva really brought out how wrong that first impression of the story was. She made me feel the heartbreak of having to choose between her love and her family, the panic of the situation suddenly thrust onto her, the bitter resentment of losing everything to join a crew who mostly see her as a burden. Her performance, both of their performances, were fantastic—and they were also diametrically opposed.
This is, I want to be clear, not me trying to paint some personal grudge between the two—rather, I am attempting to show that the two of them serve as representations of the conflict in the larger narrative, and the greatest flaw of the show. On the one hand, it’s a Greek tragedy, where the heroes die horribly at the hands of kings, gods and their own hubris. On the other, it’s a bunch of college kids cracking crass jokes and trying to put on a comedy. I don’t think either of these things are necessarily bad, but I firmly believe that they can’t exist together. Trying to mix comedy and tragedy as they did only made the jokes feel inappropriate and out of place, even when they were funny, and make the tragedy feel jarring and unwelcome even when you could see it coming. My biggest issue with the show is that it needs to decide what it wants to be, and stick to it.
To address the various parts of the show more directly, I think act 2 (the hour after the intermission) was much stronger than act 1. Act 1 covered the story of Jason and his Argonauts receiving their quest and arriving on Colchis, as well as the various people and monsters they encountered along the way. However, it suffered from trying to condense too much into too short a time. Each mini-quest they went on was only given 10 or so minutes, which meant that the stories told ended up feeling like story fragments, distant and difficult to care about. When one of Jason’s crew members was snatched by a nymph and dragged into the water, I felt nothing—I hadn’t even known him long enough to remember his name. This wasn’t so much a problem of acting as it was a problem of pace, of the story’s tempo being too fast. Act 2, on the other hand, was much more compelling, focused as it was purely on what happened on Colchis and the final fates of the Argonauts. This really let the actors start to weave a compelling narrative, and made me care about the characters and the story.
On the matter of casting, costumes and props, I have a few complaints. One of the first things I noticed related to this subject was that they cast many male characters with female actors, which I was initially a bit skeptical about. I have to say, however, that the actors really made it work—for the most part. I did find it a bit jarring whenever someone who was clearly a woman was referred to as sir, but it wasn’t too bad. The one casting I really didn’t agree with, however, was Aphrodite. Now look—I have nothing against the actor who plays her. But you just can’t cast a man as the Greek goddess of love. It doesn’t work. I couldn’t take any scene with Aphrodite in it seriously.
The costumes were generally quite good—I especially enjoyed the fire-breathing bulls, I thought the way they did that was quite clever. I do wonder about the relative lack of props, however. I mean, the main two props in the entire play were a chair and a ladder. Not a special chair or ladder, mind you—just a regular chair and a regular ladder. Is our theater department really that poor? Can we not afford a throne for the various kings featured in the play, or at least some paint so the ladder doesn’t look like it was just bought fresh from Home Depot? I mean, really. I don’t blame the play itself for this, I doubt they had any control over what budget they got, but I still think the lack of props was kind of a travesty. On a final note in regards to this sort of stuff, I thought the lighting was very well done throughout the play. There were plenty of moments when it was used to great effect, highlighting words or characters in engaging and natural ways. There was obviously a lot of work put into the lighting, and I applaud it.
To end my review, I figure I’ll address the final part of the play. Now, to be clear, I am not familiar enough with the original story to know exactly how it ends, and maybe they were just staying true to the source material, but I just don’t understand why Medea is the only one who gets a happy ending. She is objectively the most evil person in the play—murdering her two children, murdering her brother, betraying her father—her list of crimes is longer than anyone else’s. And certainly she had reasons for all those, and is meant more as a tragic character than a villainous one, but still. Some of the final conversations between Hera and Athena seemed to imply she deserved her fate, a second, loving marriage in the underworld, where Jason deserved his fate of being crushed by the rotting mask of his ship, and I just don’t agree.
Overall, Argonautika is good. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but a solid retelling of the story it is based on and a play that’s worth your time to watch.
