Dominic Cooke’s adaptation of Euripides’ Medea - starring Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels - revitalises an age-old story with its meditative tone and subtle symbolism; but its preference for a contemplative, rather than fevered, pace fails to keep the audience at the edge of their seats for the play’s entirety. 
Director Dominic Cooke has succeeded in exposing the play’s timeless nature: the themes of gender, parenting and nationality and colonisation speak to a modern audience as much as they would have done to an ancient one. The adaptation makes it clear that the same debates that troubled the Greeks, trouble us today. 
Yet, it is Okonedo’s and Daniels’ mesmerising performances that make the play truly timeless. Okonedo triumphs in bringing Medea’s complexities to light: Medea is at once both a wounded and coldly logical character. Instead of the monster popular culture presents, Okonedo makes her a very easy character to empathise with. Daniels’ performance as all the play’s men underpins Medea’s humanity. By ominously encircling the stage during Medea’s monologues, with chest out and muscles flexed, Daniels captures the idea of heroic masculinity, whilst making Medea seem the victim. 
Not only did this make the play more visceral and emotionally charged, it allowed the timeless theme of gender to shine through. Cooke’s mastery of the set design, by using ‘ingenious staging’ (in the words of Lucas Bowman, one audience member) made these themes not only present, but a strong undertone of the entire performance. The very beginning of the play saw Daniels crush a small toy house and overturn the table at the centre of the set. Whilst this occupied very little of the play’s narrative, it did draw attention to the subversion of traditional ideas of ‘parenting’ - and placed Jason, and not Medea, at its centre. This meant that the timeless themes were not just present in Euripides’ dialogue, but in these modern symbols, increasing the empathy the audience could feel with Euripides’ ancient characters. 
In fact, the connection of ancient and modern was made startlingly clear by the play’s theatre. @sohoplace, the West End’s newest theatre is astonishingly modern: a fact that, on the face of it, seemed to contrast with this ancient play. Yet, the theatre was in a round, inspired by the theatre at Epidaurus, stressing the connection between ancient and modern subtly. Indeed, by seating members of the chorus in the round, we were drawn far closer into the drama, as were Medea's women who witnessed the events first hand. 
Thus, whilst credit may be given to Euripides for making the themes of his play so timeless, the credit must be given to the adaptation for making the connection between ancient and modern astonishingly clear. 
Nonetheless, this meditative tone did have its drawbacks: it failed to keep you at the edge of your seat for the entire play. The adaptation did succeed in highlighting the emotion and violence of Medea’s murder of her children with aplomb - by keeping the action offstage, so the audience was left guessing from just a few sounds. Lucas Bowman explained how the “use of rain for a fantastic atmospheric effect” really added to this climax. That said, sections of the play, such as those involving Medea’s women, which often simply reflected on the events, didn’t live up to this emotional climax. 
However, the triumph of this adaptation was in its ability to renew Euripides' timeless themes of gender and parenting, even if this was at the expense of some suspense. Euripides came only third when he entered this play for a competition in ancient Athens in 431 BCE. We would have surely fared better with Cooke as his director and with Okonedo and Daniels starring!