Joki’s Greek-drama foray succeeds with ‘Medea’

By MILAN PAURICH

news@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Some of the most exciting theater being done anywhere these days is happening at the Calvin Center on Mahoning Avenue.

Robert Dennick Joki’s Rust Belt Theater Company is bringing the funky, bohemian vibe of off-Broadway theater to the Youngstown area. It’s just the shot in the arm we need in these lazy, hazy days of summer.

When Joki announced that he would be inaugurating his new theater with a trilogy of plays inspired by classic Greek tragedies, skeptics wondered if Joki had lost his mind.

What did the director of campy, kitschy, musical, guilty pleasures such as “Reefer Madness” and “The Rocky Horror Show” know about Greek drama? And why would anyone queue up to see productions of the same plays that bored them in high school English class?

As it turns out, Joki has an intuitive genius for grasping the essentials of Greek tragedy (i.e., what makes them tick) and a natural showman’s instinct for updating and modernizing their themes and archetypal characters.

In the process, he’s managed to make Sophocles (last month’s “Electra”) and Euripedes (current Rust Belt tenant “Medea,” which opened Friday night at the Calvin Center) not only accessible to contemporary audiences but irresistibly entertaining as well.

Perhaps only the quadruple-threat talent behind “How the Drag Queen Stole Christmas” could appreciate the fact that plays such as “Electra” and “Antigone” (opening Aug. 20) are really just supersized soap operas at heart.

With his thrillingly operatic “Medea,” Joki truly brings the “opera” part of that sudsy equation to brilliant life. (Rather than Alanis Morissette, Joki should have piped in some Verdi for background “atmosphere” instead.)

The story of an “older woman” (Molly Galano in a quietly seething performance of fire-breathing intensity) who comes undone when her ambitious (younger) husband, Jason, leaves her for a woman (Princess Glauce) half her age, “Medea” is so full of scheming, deceit, treachery and floridly overripe melodrama that it’s just about perfect. (Think Joan Crawford meets Lucrezia Borgia.)

Does Medea go insane because of her unquenchable thirst for revenge (ultimately committing the most heinous of acts, infanticide, when she kills her two young children)? Or was she already certifiable when she married Jason?

Certainly the cold-hearted cunning and single-minded calculation of her vendetta shows definite sociopathic leanings.

But there’s also something perversely honorable, even noble in the triumph of an unfairly scorned woman. Galano shrewdly makes us complicit in every step of her character’s vengeful campaign. Medea/Galano’s lip-smacking satisfaction upon hearing an emotionless recitation of her grisly misdeeds is both drolly amusing and effectively spine-chilling.

As sublime as Galano is — and I can’t imagine the show without her — the supporting cast is equally impressive. The wonderful Grace Vouvalis as Medea’s Jackie O.-like confidante Calciope, Brandon Smith (Jason), Alyssa Connelly and Anita Weinstock (Medea’s nanny and housekeeper respectively), Tom Smith (King Creon), Nathan Beagle (the king’s poker-faced servant) and Max and Turner Thompkins as Medea and Jason’s sons all make indelible impressions.

Like David Horne’s Scrap Heap sculptures in Rust Belt’s “Electra,” jewelry designer Marcie Roepke-Applegate’s “wearable art” is one of the production’s signature — and most striking — design elements.

And special kudos to “Blood Maven” Pam Sacui for her sanguinary skills. After all, it wouldn’t be a proper Greek tragedy without rivulets of crimson gore, would it?

“Medea” runs through next Saturday at the Calvin Center. For reservations, call 330-507-2358.