From Madeline Miller’s Circe and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls to Jessie Burton’s Medusa and Natalie Haynes's A Thousand Ships, feminist retellings of Greek myths have exploded on the literary scene in the past decade. Now in Beautiful Evil Things, co-created by performer Deborah Pugh and director George Mann, from Bristol-based theatre company Ad Infinitum, this genre gets a theatrical twist: a one-woman whistle-stop tour of the Trojan Wars, straight from Medusa’s all-seeing eyes.
With its hazy golden glow and intimate-yet-epic stage space, the North Wall made a great venue for this performance. The version of the performance I attended was also BSL accompanied to make it accessible to d/Deaf and hard of hearing audiences, and I appreciated the way the BSL interpreter was integrated into the piece, so what could have been distracting became a fluid reinforcement of the story.
As Medusa, Deborah Pugh gives an intoxicating performance, bringing the impossible to rich and vivid life. By turns smirking and mysterious, enraged, heartbroken, and proud, there is an astonishing physicality to her performance throughout. She stalks the stage in a black pantsuit, the blazer of which she quickly chucks to reveal a plain white vest beneath. With her lobbed black hair and fierce, flashing eyes, she recalls a sort of alien Joan Jett. This is a portrait of Medusa as a heroine, with loved ones and a vast inner life, and stories as dark and rich as liquorice.
The synergy between Pugh’s voice and the sound effects and lighting was fantastic, lending her an other-worldly quality, and allowing her to embody and differentiate dozens of characters with ease. Minimal props were used and cleverly repurposed - I lost track of how many different items Pugh’s main microphone stand became. There are a half dozen microphones arranged around the stage, and one slung through Pugh’s belt loops, which she brandishes during particularly passionate moments.
Though Medusa is the official heroine of this piece, it showcases the unflinching courage and cunning of several female characters and shines a light on exactly how horribly women are treated throughout Greek myths. There is a simmering rage beneath the slickness.
There are some truly epic moments of both battle and nimble deception, but the mightiest triumph of this piece is the fact that it takes hundreds of years of Greek history and condenses them into a narrative without ever falling into summary. The ending might strain ever so slightly to give us a sense of conclusion and triumph, but I have no better answer for what could have been done: it would’ve felt far too open-ended without it. In some ways, Beautiful Evil Things feels like a dubious assignment, masterfully delivered.
To be completely honest, I don’t have a background in Classics and this kind of show is not my thing - so the fact that even I could find so much to enthral me is a testament to its delivery and quality. Beautiful Evil Things continues its tour of the country through February 2023 - if you know any fans of mythology, lovers of striking and potent storytelling, or classicists in general, this would make an excellent Christmas gift.
