Geer’s Portrayal Helps Power ‘Medea’

Was Medea more sinned against than sinning? The controversy over the jilted sorceress and her unique approach to family values has raged since Euripides’ tragedy hit the ancient floorboards in 431 BC.

At the outdoor Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum’s latter-day amphitheater, director Heidi Helen Davis’ powerful staging proves far too smart to limit “Medea’s” timeless complexity by taking an overt stand on whether its title character is the victim of a patriarchal system. That is only one of many factors in play here.

What is breathtakingly clear in Ellen Geer’s assured performance in the title role, however, is that regardless of their moral context, Medea’s deeds were those of a woman whose bottomless rage was matched by indomitable strength of will. Sympathetic and monstrous by turns, Geer’s portrayal commands awe throughout, her pain-racked howls coiling around the verse like a serpent.

In this mythic tale of betrayal and infanticide, there’s more than enough culpability to go around. As Medea’s careerist husband, Jason, Steve Matt effectively demonstrates that virility and heroism are not synonymous. Jason’s would-be father-in-law, King Creon (Thad Geer), is undone by craven vanity, which sets him up for Medea’s wedding gift--a whole new take on “toasting the bride.” Even Aegeus (Tom Allard), Medea’s supposed ally, only offers help in exchange for a potion to cure his sterility; their extravagantly staged pact is one of the show’s high points.

Inventive use of the outdoor environs includes a surrounding chorus chanting muted lamentations from the hillside.

The biggest star, though, is poet Robinson Jeffers’ luminous 1946 adaptation, which invests even offstage events with harrowing immediacy.

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“Medea,” Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. Saturdays: this Saturday-Aug. 18, Sept. 15-29, 8 p.m.; Sundays: this Sunday-Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m., Oct. 7-21, 3 p.m. Ends Oct. 21. $14-$20. (310) 455-3723. Running time: 2 hours.