One of the defining hits of this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been Hotel Medea, the six-hour all-night version of the Greek Medea myth that runs each weekend in August from midnight until dawn. Produced by Anglo-Brazilian theatre company Zecora Ura in association with London-based, Yemen-born director and performer Persis Jade Maravala, who plays Medea as well as co-directing with Zecora Ura's Jorge Lopes Ramos, Hotel Medea is a disorienting experiential whirlwind that puts the audience in the thick of the action, from the rave-like fiesta of love, death and colonialism that opens the first two hours, to the after-hours dream-state of a dormitory bunk-bed where you're stroked to sleep by nurse-maids as a very personal war rages close by. As a piece of theatre Hotel Medea is all-consuming. This isn't just the case for the audience too, but also for Maravala and Ramos, who've spent the last six years creating what is clearly a labour of love. As
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.