Paul Sparer | Through the Shattered Lens

In 431 BC, the Greek playwright Euripides premiered his latest play, Medea. The story of a woman scorned who deals with her anger by murdering her ex-husband’s soon-to-be wife, future father-in-law, and finally her own children, Medea has lived on as one of Euripides’s most-performed plays. Three actresses have won Tony awards for playing Medea on Broadway, setting the record for the most Tonys won for playing the same role.

Medea is a play that is open to a lot of interpretations. Quite a few stagings of the play present Medea as being a sympathetic character, a victim of a misogynistic culture who was driven to extremes by the men around her. I can see that argument and it is true that the play does emphasize that all the men in Medea’s life treat her terribly. Creon plots to send Medea into exile so that his daughter can marry her husband. Medea’s smarmy husband, Jason, says that he has no choice but to marry a princess because Medea is only a “barbarian,” fit to be his mistress but not his wife. In many ways, Medea is a sympathetic character. But, for me, all of that sympathy goes out the window as soon as she murders her children. The fact that, in most stage versions of the play, the Gods then help her to escape makes her even less sympathetic in my eyes. (Needless to say, it certainly doesn’t do much for the reputation of the Greek Gods. Then again, one gets the feeling that even the ancient Gods didn’t particularly like their Gods.)

In 1983, Zoe Caldwell won a Tony for playing Medea. (Interestingly enough, in this production, the Nurse was played by Judith Anderson, who also won a Tony for playing Medea, in 1947.) A performance at the Kennedy Center was filmed for PBS. The production, with its minimalist sets and atmosphere of growing dread, captures the nightmarish intensity of the story. Zoe Caldwell gives a riveting performance as Medea, alternating between wild-eyed madness and subtle manipulation.

As the most horrific of the Greek plays, Medea is a production that just feels right for the Halloween season. Here is Zoe Caldwell in 1983’s Medea.

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing The American Short Story, which ran semi-regularly on PBS in 1974 to 1981. The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube and Tubi.

This week, we have an adaptation of a Henry James short story.

Episode #3 “The Jolly Corner”

(Dir by Arthur Barron, originally aired in 1975)

In 1906, Spencer Brydon (Fritz Weaver) returns to America from Europe, where he’s spent the majority of his adult life. Brydon has specifically returned to oversee some properties that he has inherited, including his childhood home and an adjacent building that’s going to be turned into an apartment complex. The middle-aged Brydon reconnects with his old friend, Alice Shaverton (Salome Jens), and finds himself wondering what type of man he would have come if he had stayed and worked in America as opposed to living a life of leisure in Europe.

Soon, Spencer comes to feel that his alternate “American” self is actually haunting his childhood home, his so-called “Jolly Corner.” His American self haunts him like a ghost, a menacing shadow that continually forces him to ask “what if?” He becomes obsessed with both his former home and his shadowy alter ego. But is this American version of Spencer Brydon real? And if it is real, what does it want from the Spencer Brydon who went to Europe?

This was a really well-done adaptation of a Henry James short story, one that was full of gothic atmosphere and which featured a compelling lead performance from Fritz Weaver. As directed by Arthur Barron, this episode did a good job of portraying the story’s horror elements while also reminding us that James’s story, for all of its talk of ghosts and alternate realities, is ultimately a portrait of a really bad midlife crisis. Spencer did what a lot of rich Americans do. He went to Europe to escape the responsibilities of his home country. And now, in middle-age, he’s asking himself, “Is this all there is?”

If nothing else, watching this episode might inspire the viewer to read more Henry James. That’s a good thing.