Theater review: Yale Repertory Theatre’s ‘Mojada’ lacks the passion of its Greek inspiration

As theater trends go, having two major Connecticut theaters both doing modern variations on the same Greek tragedy by Euripides in the same month is a bit of a head-scratcher.

We often access ancient Greek drama when we want to process massive cultural shifts or overwhelming psychological distress, but some of those mythic tales are more helpful than others.

The play that has inspired both “The Art of Burning” by Kate Snodgrass at Hartford Stage through March 26 and “Mojada” by Luis Alfaro at Yale Repertory Theatre through April 1 is “Medea” by Euripides, which had its premiere 2,454 years ago.

In Euripides’ play, Medea (who had been a princess of Colchis with a gift for prophecy) learns that her husband Jason (of Argonauts and Golden Fleece fame) has married another woman, forsaking her while still laying claim to their two sons. Most of the play involves Medea’s overwrought reaction to her lamentable situation.

In Alfaro’s “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” Medea (pronounced with Spanish rather than Greek inflections) and Hason are undocumented immigrants who have fled Mexico with their young son Acan and are trying to get ahead by doing menial work in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles. Hason is hired and seduced by the couple’s wealthy businesswoman landlord Armida. Medea is not just losing her husband but is being encouraged to give up some cherished cultural traditions. She sees Acan embracing American customs. She confides her fears in the play’s elderly mother figure Tita (a combination of both the nurse character and the Greek chorus in Euripides’ version) and in a friendly, funny neighbor who is named Josefina but is trying to Americanize herself as “Josie.”

“Mojada” is the conclusion of a trilogy of plays that Alfaro adapted from Greek classics. Besides “Mojada,” he turned two tragedies by Sophocles into “Oedipus el Rey” and “Electricidad.” “Mojada” is out of an earlier “Medea”-rooted script called “Bruja” in 2012 and has undergone major rewrites over the years.

“Mojada” strips “Medea” down from 10 characters (including two children and two kings) plus a chorus of Greek women to just Medea and Hason (Camila Moreno and Romar Fernandez, who emote well independently but lack chemistry as a couple), their son Acan (written as a one-dimensional good kid and played brightly and sweetly by 10-year-old Romar Fernandez),the wise elder Tita (Alma Martinez, exhibiting a range of classical and contemporary acting that no one else onstage can match), the assimilating neighbor Josefina (Nancy Rodriquez, making the most of being the main comic relief in the play) and the villainous other woman Armida (Monica Sanchez, having to impossibly juggle several degrees of superiority and insensitivity that Euripides handled very differently).

Alfaro, a McArthur “genius grant” recipient known for his lyrical dramas about contemporary Latin American issues, is not unknown in Connecticut. Hartford Stage did his comedy “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner” back in 2007 when he was there on a year-long residency. While he was in town he also performed his solo piece, “No Holds Barrio,” at Real Art Ways. None of his adaptations of Greek tragedies have been done in Connecticut, so “Mojada” comes at us without precedent or context, which is disappointing and confounding on a number of levels.

“Mojada” has quite a few things in common with another modernized Euripides tragedy Yale Rep has done, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Girls” (based on “The Bacchae”) in 2019, but this is a much weaker play and production. “Girls” transported the wild ritualistic gathering conducted by a vengeful god in “The Bacchae” into a thoroughly credible and suitably horrific trip-hop rave in a state forest. “Girls” respected the grisly ending of “The Bacchae,” in which a drugged mother unknowingly helps dismember her own son.

“Mojada” is similarly respectful of the climax of “Medea,” which won’t be mentioned here in case you have been able to avoid that spoiler for the past 2,000 years, but the ending is much more problematic than “The Bacchae.” It, too, ends in an unthinkable act of violence, but not one that can be excused by drugs or gods. Badly handled, it seems at the very least to be overdone and at the worst misguided and misogynistic, especially coming from a male playwright who has magnified the gender divide in the drama.

What’s fascinating is that while “Mojada” goes there and allows its modern-day Medea to commit an unspeakable act, “The Art of Burning” at Hartford Stage questions the sanity of anyone who would propose that the same act, in roughly the same circumstances, in today’s world. The lead character in “The Art of Burning” is a woman going through a divorce. She sees a production of “Medea,” thinks of it in terms of constant injustices and prejudices being perpetrated by men upon women for centuries and rethinks how she and her daughter have been raised to casually accept these offenses.

That’s a much more rational way to process “Medea” in modern times. Alfaro goes in the other direction, ramping up the supernatural beliefs in the piece. If he’s ultimately trying to find justificationfor Medea’s behavior, or Acan’s or Armida’s, he simply doesn’t deliver.

Director Laurie Woolery has a great gift for creating theater where all the elements align and become greater than their parts. In her shows, the characters fit with their environments and vice versa, even when the words are stylized and the settings are abstract. The lights and sound are made fluid and natural amid the voices and movement. Woolery and the designers (scenic designer Marcelo Martínez García, costume designer Kitty Cassetti, lighting designer Stephen Strawbridge, projection designer Shawn Lovell-Boyle and sound designer Bryn Scharenberg) have crafted an expansive yet purposefully claustrophobic world. It’s the exterior of a small, worn-down multi-story house but what really sets the scene is the small closed-off backyard with its confining chain link fences.

It’s in the backyard where nearly all the action takes place. It’s where Medea sets up her sewing machine (with the perfect theatrical detail of an electrical cord running into the house through a window) and does her freelance seamstress magic. It’s where Tita gardens and Acan plays and Josefina shows off a new dress. There’s a sex scene in the yard. It’s quite a lively homestead.

This is a skilled production, but the script fails it. Alfaro is a fine poetic writer, but he structures “Mojada” clumsily, drawing from Greek-styled narrative in the beginning then stringing a loose plot around scenes that are more about the grand personalities of the characters than a storyline, then bringing in his own style of inner monologue. The actors don’t have a common language. They seem disconnected. It is particularly hard to believe that Medea and Acan ever had a happy marriage.

Alfaro does a disservice to Euripides and to Medea by removing emotional monologues from the original tragedy and replacing them with other tales and confessions that may have their own deep resonance in uncovering Medea’s state of mind but don’t give her a real motivation for her actions. The playwright dispenses with Euripides’ final verbal confrontation between Medea and her husband, rendering it in horror and magic imagery instead.

There are too many areas where we’re asked to suspend belief or see people lie and cheat in ways that seem outlandish and out-of-character. “Mojada” lacks the cathartic passion of its Greek inspiration. If you want to ruminate on the modern meaning of “Medea,” you might want to check out “The Art of Burning” at Hartford Stage instead.