Content Warning: The following review mentions abuse, guns, violence, and adult subject matter.
“I need you to listen to me!”
Medea pleads with us, with her audience, with her daughters. “I need you to listen to me.” Afraid they’ll perpetuate the same cycle of poor choices she has, all she wants us to do is to listen. But are we really listening? Can we actually hear what she’s saying? Or will we leave and make the same bad choices we’ve been making up until now. Grace Passô’s intense solo drama Kill Your Father, directed by Marcio Beauclair, is a radically feminist retelling of the ancient myth, told by Medea herself. Performed by Maria Paula Carreño, Kill Your Father is one of those shows that never leaves you.
Photo by Dahlia Katz
The large tufted carpet vulva dominates the backdrop of the playing space; created shades of reds, pinks, and purples, it perfectly embodies the ethos of this play: that women give life…but they can also take it away. When Medea emerges, she’s dressed in a white satin wedding gown, with what appears to be two bloody handprints over her breasts, with blood streaming from them – again, the milk of life pouring forth from her. Kill Your Father aims to rewrite the narrative laid down centuries ago, and as soon as you enter the room you feel the feminine power surging through it…then comes the rage.
Medea is furious. The women who live in her neighbourhood, most of them exiled women like her, have no idea what she’s done to get here: how she’s restored, protected, but also ended the lives of the men around her. She tells us we’re all her children, her daughters which fortunately her husband encouraged her to have. Our father has been away for quite some time, but he’s coming home today, and Medea wants us to kill him; to take revenge for his absence, to stop the cycles of abuse she and her neighbours have been caught in, to become the women she’s always dreamed of us becoming. But Medea has been alive for a very long time, she has seen us choose the wrong men over and over in many ways, and she’s not willing to let that happen again.
Photo by Dahlia Katz
The set not only functions as a metaphorical symbol, but also has a practical function within the play. From its folds, Medea initially pulls out a detachable train to add to her wedding dress. This makes her take up more space and have more fluidity as she talks about how she loves her husband and the creation of the world she desires – making life. But when she goes back to it for the final scene of the play, this time she takes out a machine gun – she’s ready to take life away. The fact that both of these object emerge from the same place, a woman’s womb, only solidifies the point Medea, and Passô, are making about the power women hold and how fierce we could be if we only chose to fully wield that power.
Photo by Dahlia Katz
Maria Paula Carreño gives a heart-stopping performance in Kill Your Father. Her anger seethes throughout the performance, yet instead of feeling one-note, the rises and falls of the ferocity and pain make it an emotional ride you go on with her. Her deep connection with the audience keeps us laser focused on her throughout the piece, and when she looks you in the eyes it feels like she’s staring into your very soul, hoping to find the same flame as we see in hers.
Kill Your Father is a passionate reminder of our agency: just because it’s the way things are doesn’t mean it’s how things have to be. We all have the power to break generational cycles, to right the wrongs we’ve done, and to make our stories our own.
Kill Your Father runs in the Bob Nasmith Innovation Backspace at Theatre Passe Muraille until March 29. For more information and tickets, visit: https://expandido.ca/
Cover Photo: Maria Paula Carreño. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
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