Mamma Medea

A French-speaking Medea in the version of a Flemish author.

With his Mamma Medea Tom Lanoye returns to the origin of the 2500-year-old myth. He portrays a young Medea, not yet weighted down by crime and love. From here his sharp sensual language unrelentingly drives along the piece to its dramatic climax. The butcher’s son puts Euripides’ ancient story through the mincer and prepares it in his very own way. It is typically Lanoye, to put it briefly. But then in French.

Medea may well never have crossed the path of the Swiss-Brussels director Christophe Sermet if he hadn’t stumbled upon Lanoye’s version. “It is an old myth immersed in a present-day bath. A meeting between mythology and triviality which gives off sparks,” he says.

The first, Flemish, Mamma Medea, directed by Gerardjan Rijnders could be seen at Toneelhuis in 2001. It read as a clash between cultures, a conflict of power with love as its stake. The French-speaking version resonates differently but none the less urgent. On the contrary perhaps. For the French-speaking audience it is an excellent introduction to one of the figure heads of contemporary Flemish literature.