cover photo by Roger Lewin/Jennifer Girard Studio
"Victory Gardens Theater
did not simply present a world premiere of a new play on Thursday
night. It conjured a new life for a myth that is more than 2,000
years old. And it did so with such stunning and completely
realized theatricality that it seemed as if all the talent
involved in the project has suddenly ripened and burst apart.
The play is called PECONG. And
although at first its Caribbean island setting seems far from the
ancient Greece as a globe will permit, it turns out to be not
just one of the most astonishingly powerful retellings of the
Medea story, but one of the most faithful. In moving this classic
tale of sexual possession and bloody revenge to another
continent, playwright Steve Carter has rediscovered its meaning.
Sex and power are the focus of
PECONG, and the struggles come in all varieties. At the center
there is the battle between man and woman in the ferocious
relationship of Mediyah (the Medea character), the sorceress, and
Jason Allcock, the shallow womanizer whom she falls madly in love
with and cedes all her power to, only to be crassly dumped. Hell
hath no fury like this woman scorned.
But there are also wars among
women, between brother and sister, between those of light and
dark skin tones and, of course, among men. (In the Carnival scene
a `pecong', or verbal battle of insults hurled in rhymed verse,
is played out in great style by Mediyah's brother, dressed as a
rooster, and her lover, dressed as a ram.)
PECONG is Carter's most
ambitious and beautifully written play to date—full of humor,
passion, high drama and low comedy."
Hedy Weiss, Chicago
Sun-Times
originally produced by the Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago
3 M, 5 F, plus a flexible amount of townspeople.
I S B N: 0-88145-107-X, $8.95