Medea Material at Trap Door Theatre

Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended

"...This is a difficult play to write about because its effect is a mood or vibe rather than anything verbal. I wish I could just tell you to go and let it engulf you with no forethought, warning, or explanation. It does the thing art's supposed to do-it shows rather than tells. Through the barest of means Trap Door manages to summon a massive, elemental vision. Just as the nine cast members seamlessly slide in and out of identities, foreground, and background, so that wooden boat serves variously as refuge, coffin, and shrine; the plastic sheets are sometimes water, other times a barrier between this world and other worlds."

Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended

"...There is a stark gorgeousness to this production. J Michael Griggs set design holds luminous surprises and draws effects from simple materials, and there is a lot of humor in Hannah Wein's costuming. Max Truax and Claire Bauman have created a post-modern ballet of complexity and have conquered the limitations of the small space. It is an intellectual work as much as a kinetic one, and at 70 minutes with no intermission, leaves lots of time for a post-show conversation with any fellow witnesses."

Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended

"...Euripides's Medea is a tragic protagonist who is difficult to even call a "hero" but whose pain and fury has remained a source of fascination for thousands of years. In every age people feel drawn to try to make sense of her as a contemporary figure, and so it is with German playwright Heiner Müller's Medea Material. The 1982 fragmentary play is a prime example of Eastern European theatricality. With a story well-known enough that the plot can be told clearly without needing to be dwelt upon, Medea Material is more like a series of impressions detailing Medea and Jason's state of mind than a straightforward narrative. Trap Door veteran director Max Truax returns for the new production, which heavily features music, movement, and an ensemble cast to accompany a poetic translation by Sarah Tolan-Mee that takes another stab at what, exactly, makes Medea tick."

NewCity Chicago - Recommended

"...The ensemble's churning choreography provides a series of setpieces linked by Medea's story, yet exploring psychological shadows underneath rather than illustrate narrative, even in the text's rare moments of dialogue. It allows for striking images and gorgeous movement, especially in a dance-hall style sequence where pairs of Jasons and Medeas multiply as the sequence repeats and repeats. With each moment existing in its own world, it occasionally leads to-as my dancer companion put it-a feeling of all duration, no time. Yet the play undeniably, effectively, creates viscerally uncomfortable and beautiful sensations in the audience to turn myth into a waking dream."