Saw Medea last night

Wes and I are trying to do more cultural things around town. We tired of hearing the same old mantra that there's no culture in LA. Mainly from ourselves. There is and you just might have to go to Pasadena or Echo Park or Boyle Heights or San Pedro or Laguna. Sorry, folks.

Well, we went to see MEDEA starring Annette Bening at UCLA Live last night. UCLA LIVE is kind of great because it's the LA version of BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Experimental, provocative, theatre, dance and music. It's got a lot of shit going on. And there were a few celebs in the audience last night, which is always nice. I was sitting between my boyfriend and Zachary Quinto, the guy from Heroes and Star Trek. I met him once before he was famous and he read a few pages from a play of mine and had something very sweet to say about my writing afterwards. Wes told me I should have said something to him, but it was over four years ago and I doubt he'd remember.

Anyway back to the show. I appreciate the fact that UCLA Live produced it themselves and that it was thinking outside the box, but I think the problem was conceptual. Wes liked Annette Bening less than I did. I didn't enjoy her performance, but I think it had less to do with her and more to do with the director's conception of the character of Medea, who's a woman who is wronged and kills her own children (in a nutshell). I had the good fortune of seeing Fiona Shaw at BAM years ago and the image of blood splattering on a lucite wall as she's killing her children will never leave my mind. It was theatrical and exciting and bold. All things that this production wasn't really. They tried to make Medea sort of nice so you felt for her when you realized that she was going to kill her kids. You don't need to do that with this character. The force of her fury should be explanation enough for doing something so wrong. And it's actually not even all that wrong, it's just highly debatable in the context of the play. But that's the fun of the play--I guess if you consider deceit, murdering kids and going on a rampage fun. And I do.

This isn't the Susan Smith story. It's Medea. And when it is done right, that bitch really kicks ass.