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MOJADA: A MEDEA IN LOS ANGELES. By Luis Alfaro. Directed by Jessica Kubzansky. The Theatre @ Boston Court, Getty Villa Fleischman Theater, Pacific Palisades, California. September 9, 2015.
Luis Alfaro's timely adaptation of Euripides' Medea marks ten years of annual performances at the Getty Villa's classical Greek amphitheatre in Pacific Palisades, California. The Greek setting of the source text could be extremely resonant now as the plight of Syrian refugees traveling to Europe garnered US news headlines days before Mojada's Getty Villa premiere. However, Alfaro's adaptation-which retains only the source's major plot points-is set in Los Angeles, and reminds us that exiles in the Americas face harrowing experiences too. Events like Medea and Hason's perilous Mexico/US border crossing with their son Acan and an older servant/ healer, Tita, were depicted in the play's sole stylized flashback scene. This is not a border drama focusing primarily on the traumatic consequences of this journey; it is the characters' attempts to assimilate into a culture addicted to work and built on others' sacrifices that dominates the play's action.
Spectators can learn much from Alfaro's focus on the hardship faced by Medea and Hason's family as the pair aim to realize the "American dream" as undocumented seamstress and day laborer. In the transition following scene 1, Efren Delgadillo Jr.'s efficient set comprised of scaffolding and a scrim was rolled into the orchestra, and an image of Medea and Hason's dilapidated bungalow rental home was projected on it. This home was clearly out of place amid the grandeur of the Getty Villa's skene and the affluent homes surrounding it. The visual contrast, combined with...