Mad About “Medea”

Luis Alfaro’s Winning Contemporary Spin on the Euripides Tragedy Sparkles and Bites at the Getty Villa

By MICHAEL AUSHENKER  | Pali Life Editor

Love, lust, power and murder at the Getty Villa.

No, not an executive shake-up at the museum; those were the themes on parade when about 500 people attended a Sept. 9 press preview of the play “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” Luis Alfaro’s contemporary, East Los Angeles-set retelling of a Euripides tragedy at the Getty Villa, where it officially opened Sept. 10.

A twist on the Jason and the Argonauts lore, the original “Medea” play’s titular anti-heroine betrays her own family by falling in love with cultural outsider Jason and stealing the Golden Fleece for him before marrying him and having his two babies. Then Jason ditches Medea to marry the princess and have children with her… and that’s when Medea exacts revenge on Jason, not by killing him but by destroying everything (and everyone) he loves.

The Euripides play is a curiosity that has led feminist scholars to interpret it as a rare and firm counter-thesis to ancient Greece’s patriarchal society.

Enter MacArthur Fellow Alfaro, author of “Electricidad” and “Oedipus el Rey.” With “Mojada,” the playwright has rewired the “Medea” tale as an Eastside story set amid the tightly knit Latino community; turning this piece into an epic allegory involving immigrants coming to the United States in search of the American dream and asking at what price on their soul the cost?

Directed by Jessica Kubzansky, this interpolation of “Medea” stars Sabina Zuniga Vallera in the title role and Justin Huen as the Jason figure.

Euripides, of course, was one of the three great authors of Greek tragedy, alongside Aeschylus and Sophocles, and “Medea,” one of his most famous works. And yet, the play (one of 92 attributed to Euripides) bombed in its day, not winning any prizes at the spring religious festival for Dionysos in Athens in 431 B.C.

“Mojada” presents the plight of Hason (Huen) and Medea (Varela), a live-in couple who has escaped Mexico for America. Americanized Mexicana Armida (Marlene Forte)—he puppet-mistress property owner who employs the ambitious, avaricious Hason and owns the house he and the simple village girl Medea live in with tween son Acan (Anthony Gonzalez)—invites tension into their home and gossip into their ’hood via old lady Tita (Vivis) and tamale girl Josefina (Zilah Mendoza), who proudly embraces the Americanized nickname “Josie.”

“Only people with money have secrets,” warns Josie.

Set in Boyle Heights, Alfaro sneaks in a lot of commentary on Latino culture and conflicts in his re-built “Medea” construct. Along the way, he takes ample shots at cultural stereotypes, gringo hipsters gentrifying the area and at the neighborhood itself. (“They built four freeways through East L.A. How’s that for community building?”)

Entering act three, tensions boil between Medea and her mate as Medea begs Hason to make their union legal. Quips Medea, swiping at the institution of marriage, “Most of the people don’t believe in it anyway, they do it five, six times.”

Meanwhile, Hason defends his suspiciously close professional relationship with boss Armida.

“She is a door. That’s all she is, a door,” he says.

Arrogant and assimilated, Armida inevitably arrives at the house to evict Medea: “One day. Twenty-four hours. Make them matter.”

“Oh, I will,” replies Medea.

And the design of the house’s façade—with a configuration of its windows and the door gaping like a hollowed-out skull—do not take that for granted.

No real complaints regarding Kubzansky’s cast. Varela and Huen are excellent leads while Gonzalez gets the job done as their son. Forte’s deliciously evil Armida is pure Grand Guignole, straight out of the Cruella de Vil School of Villainy. Generators of comic relief, Vivis (as sort of a Greek chorus commentator) and Mendoza steal their scenes with their barbs and banter, such as in a scene where Josefina talks about how all good Mexican women should have plenty of backside.

“I should look like the old country—plump and full of possibilities,” Josie says.

Kubzansky exercises tight reign over the production, with some visually engaging and symbolic touches, such as the choreography of a fence during a flashback and moments where characters ascend/descend the theater’s aisles.

As Mendoza, an actress who previously worked in Alfaro’s “Electricidad,” summed up to the Palisadian-Post about Alfaro’s winning attributes as a writer, “From very early on, I have loved Luis’s sense of family and community. He is a poet with a whip-smart sense of humor.”

For sure, that interior knowledge of familial conflict and the zingers are on entertaining display in “Mojada.”

“Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. through Oct. 3 at the J. Paul Getty Museum Getty Villa’s Outdoor Theater, 17985 Pacific Coast Hwy. Tickets: $40 (Thursdays), $42 (Fridays) and $45 (Saturdays).

Alfaro talks about “Mojada” Saturday, Oct. 3 at 3 p.m. at the Getty Villa. Call 310-440-7300; visit getty.edu.