Maria Dolores Pesce on Medea Material, “Dramma.it”, May 19 2026

POLIS Teatro Festival 2026
Maria Dolores Pesce, “Dramma.it”, May 19 2026

https://www.dramma.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=41199:polis-teatro-festival-2026&catid=40&Itemid=12

“At the Teatro Rasi/Ridotto on Sunday, May 10th. The contingency of a theatrical performance is the deepest metaphor for life, during whose time—as in the Chinese tradition—one never steps into the same river, or rather, the river one steps into day by day is never the same. Thus, as the great figures of 20th-century Theater Criticism, Gramsci and Gobetti in particular, teach us, it is appropriate, interesting, and often necessary to see the same show multiple times because, despite being the same, it is never the same and shows itself as new precisely because the water of the theater flows perennially.

All this to say that I had the opportunity to see this latest effort by Agata during the preview last autumn and to review it a first time, but here, as I expected, something new happens. The Medea by Heiner Müller, which inspired it, has become a bit more the Medea of Agata Tomsic, who more clearly filters the multiple nature of the character: a saving sorceress, a flaming witch, a master with the Golden Fleece capable of giving life and death like the essence of the feminine, but also a modern migrant, the product of a colonialism that strips nations and, at the same time, of a slavery that even at home binds women more than men to the exhausting rhythms of a predatory economy. An ancient and intimate myth of an eternal human condition that, in the feminine, often turns into suffering but also revelation.

Patiently, she filters the character, and from the widened mesh of her net, the fascination of the Fear emanating from this character—which contains and safeguards the thousand nuances of being a female—emerges even more. Agata is a disturbing and almost intimidating performer, capable of enduring the obscene harshness of Müller’s language (in Saverio Vertone’s beautiful translation) to make it illuminating and revealing through her present performing body and her voice, which at times transfigures into pure sound and a piercing cry. Who is Medea? Ultimately, we still do not know, and perhaps we never will.

A production of great quality that achieves an unusual compactness, awareness, and coherence among the set design, lighting, sound, the golden fleece worn as a beautiful costume, the text, and all the other aesthetic components. Highly engaging and, in this sense, moving […]”.