A startling world premiere of Erin Shield’s Medusa is now playing at Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto’s Distillery District.
This play has many moving parts and seems, at times, disjointed, but it is brilliantly moved forward by a pair of outstanding performances from Amy Keating and Dante Prince. The theme of female rage – both internalized and externalized is in the forefront as Medusa is brutally savaged by gods and mortals.
The play incorporates many aspects of the Greek myth surrounding Medusa, the only mortal of the three Gorgon sisters. This serpent-headed gross monster could turn humans into stone with a single glance. She was beheaded by Perseus, who owned a magic sword, shield, and winged sandals.
In Act One, Medusa is applying for a job with the goddess Athena. She becomes the successful applicant and is plunged into the reeling office politics of the gods, including Perseus and the grifter Poseidon. She unjustly comes into disfavour and is ultimately raped by Poseidon.
Act two takes a hard turn. We find ourselves in the modern-day culture of “rage rooms.” An activity I was unfamiliar with, after some research I was surprised to find it is a burgeoning business. Medusa, unseen, is the operator, and through this enterprise, she vents her anger.
Annie (Amy Keating) and Percy (Dante Prince) are the employees who run the mechanics of the operation and also observe disgusting behaviour. After a series of rage room antics, the climax is as horrifying as the writhing serpents on Medusa’s head.
It is in Act Two that Keating and Prince deliver brilliant performances. Amy is cool and calm as she goes about her strange business. Sarcasm is evident in both her words and her physicality. She can be both strong and weak at the same time – both controlled and wild in the same scene.
Prince’s Percy feels awkward in this bizarre employment of rage enabler. He is both softly philosophic at times and can be enraged by the injustice he observes. Through various events, he ends up with the aforementioned sword, shield and wings.
Oyin Oladejo, as Medusa, displays a full diaspora of acting as she evolves from a timid employee to an enraged victim.
A scintillating soliloquy is delivered by Michelle Monteith as an office employee who is abused by a male boss and then thinks she has managed it appropriately. But like death by a thousand cuts, she is slowly pilloried until she must quit her job. Percy is virtually in tears as he begs for some just reaction.
Gord Rand’s oily Poseidon is almost too stereotyped – you can practically see his handlebar mustache growing as he ties a damsel to the railway tracks.
Unique creativity from director Mitchell Cushman and sound engineer Heidi Wai-Yee Chan took the form of headsets available to every patron. Afraid of losing the communal feeling that is live theatre, I was suspect. But the earphones were suspended above the ears so one could hear both the miked dialogue and the stage dialogue at the same time. It was eerie and compelling theatre when you could hear the serpents underscoring onstage discussion, like a hissing Greek chorus.
Erin Shields’ singular re-interpretation of the Medusa myth raises fearsome questions of modern injustice to women. Rage can take many forms and is displayed as a natural reaction to injurious inequity.
‘Medusa’ by Erin Shields
A Soulpepper production in collaboration with Outside the March
Performers: Oyin Oladejo, Amy Keating, Sasha Khan, Michelle Monteith, Dante Prince, Gord Rand.
Director: Mitchell Cushman
Sound design: Heidi Wai-Yee Chan
Lighting design: Nick Blais
Performance runs through: July 12, 2026.
Tickets: https://tickets.youngcentre.ca/overview/15212 or call (416) 866-8666
