Medusa, by Erin Shields, opened on Wednesday night at Soulpepper. It’s a really interesting piece brimming with ideas but I wasn’t completely convinced it worked. If I’d seen it at a workshop my reaction would have been very positive but also a feeling that there was still work to do. I wish I was smart enough to know what that might be!

As it stands it’s very much a work of two acts playing with aspects of the Medusa and related legends (in fact, spotting who all the characters are is a challenge in itself). In Act 1 we meet young Medusa. She’s not yet a monster. In fact she’s a bright young woman hired by Athena to be her sidekick, confidante and, above all, ideas person and strategist. The trouble is Medusa is really good at dreaming up stuff that would be great for the people of Athens while what Athena wants is schemes that will boost her advancement in the “family firm”. It’s sort of Rogers vs. Rogers in archaic Athens. Like all such idealists thrown into the banal world of corporate politics Medusa becomes disillusioned. Along the way we meet her less talented sisters and a cynical Poseidon who wearily schools her in the Way of the World.

This act also features a really interesting sound design idea. Each audience member has an “above the ear” headset. Besides being able to hear what’s on stage, one hears “voices” piped into one ear or the other. It’s clever and quite disorienting. I think it’s supposed to represent “inner thoughts” that wouldn’t normally be audible to others. I like it.

In Act 2 the headsets are gone and we are in the Gorgons’ Cave. Medusa is now a disembodied voice (at least until the final few moments). She is running a “rage business”. Women can hire the cave and have it transformed into whatever they like and then they can completely trash it. Again there are some cool ideas. The trashing takes place by characters in Hazmat suits behind a semi-permeable screen so we see a hazy version of the action. In contrast Medusa’s employees, Percy and Annie are very human and generally seen on a brightly lit stage or in the auditorium. They are pretty ordinary in contrast to the sometimes weird customers. Rage manifests itself in many different forms sometimes surprising and shocking those who feel it. If the message is that we all get angry and sometimes that is a reasonable, perhaps the only reasonable, reaction to the state of the world than it’s made effectively.

From an execution point of view it’s all very well done. The designs; sound (Heidi Wai-Yere Chan), lighting (NIck Blais), sets (Anahita Dehbonehie) and costumes (Ming Wong) all make major contributions to the atmosphere. Director Mitchell Cushman uses the space in imaginative ways and draws some excellent performances from the cast; most of whom are playing multiple roles. Oyin Oladejo is Medusa and she gets Shields’ version of young Medusa just right; conscientious, imaginative and just not wordly enough! Michelle Monteith’s Athena is the very image of the entitled scion of the family firm just waiting to move up the corporate ladder and Gord Rand is spot on as the cynical younger brother of the CEO who knows that will never happen. Danté Prince is good as a rather dim Jason and even better as the thoughtful and confused Percy in Act 2. Amy Keating is sharp as the cynical younger sister in Act 1 and the pert Annie in Act 2. Sasha Khan gets to play multiple roles effectively enough.

So lots to like and I still can’t satisfactorily explain why the whole felt like less than the sum of the parts. Maybe one has to see it more than once? Medusa is presented by Soulpepper and Outside the March and runs at the Young Centre until July 12th.

Photo credit: Dahlia Katz