Ben Daniels - "I play all the men in my new play!"

Virgin Radio

14 Feb 2023, 08:36

The theatre legend stars in a new production of an old classic.

First produced in 431 BC, Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and centred on the actions of the former Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason.

In the play, Medea finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering his new wife as well as her own two sons, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.

Starring Sophie Okonedo in the titular role, a new production of the story opens at new West End venue @sohoplace on February 17th. Ben Daniels (who plays Jason/Creon/Aegeus) popped into The Graham Norton Radio Show With Waitrose this weekend to tell us more.

"I play all the men in it," explains Ben. "There are four other women and I play all the male parts. And that came from the idea that when these plays were originally done back 2500 years ago, they did it with two or three people and there was a lot of mask work.

"I've known Sophie for nearly 30 years. We're kind of like an old married couple. She called and said, "I'm doing this workshop, we'd really like you to come and play all the men". I wasn't sure, but I went and did this workshop and thought, "Okay, this could be quite good fun." I never leave the stage, so it's quite different to anything I've done before. There's also like a sixth character that's kind of a patriarchal energy force. It's really interesting."

But how do you adapt a play that's so old? Where does the source material come from?

"This adaptation of it was was written in the forties, just post Second World War," says Ben, "by this incredible American poet called Robinson Jeffers. He used a lot of war imagery that was around at that time, but it's incredibly poetic. But it sounds like people speaking - it's the most incredible translation, ninety minutes long. We play it all with no interval. It plays out like a psychological horror film, like a Hitchcock film. It is incredibly shocking, still, 2500 years later. There's an awful, awful silence at the end. We found that people don't want to applaud. It just really takes its toll on an audience member..."

What must be strange is taking such an old play to such a new theatre, with @sohoplace being the first new build theatre in London's West End in half a century.

"I know!" says Ben. "Me and Sophie knew we were going to do it there, so we went in hardhats to take a look before it even opened. We were the first people that stood on the stage. It was basically a building site, but you know it was going to be special, even then..."

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