Annette Bening Premieres Tonight in MEDEA at Freud Playhouse

Academy Award nominee Annette Bening premieres to night in the title role of a new interpretation of Euripides' MEDEA.  The show, which opens tonight after several days of previews at UCLA's Freud Playhouse will run through Oct. 18.

The play, the first-ever original production created by UCLA Live, and part of UCLA Live's InterNational Theatre Festival is directed by Croatia's Lenka Udovicki, who is known for her opera and theater creations throughout Europe. The production also stars Angus Macfadyen as Jason, Mary Lou Rosato as the nurse, Daniel Davis as Kreon, Hugo Armstrong as Aigeus and Joseph Ruskin as the tutor.

Composer Nigel Osborne collaborated on an original score with Los Angeles-based Persian music group The Lian Ensemble, who performs onstage during the play. The production features costume design by Bjanka Adzic Ursulov, choreography by Mladen Vasari, lighting design by Lap Chi Chu and scenic design by Richard Hoover.

According to official show material, the show is still the same iconic tale of the "passionate and destructive affair between the mortal Greek hero Jason and the mystical and exotic Medea." However, in retelling, "Udovicki, who has directed theater and opera around the world, incorporates classical elements, such as a 12-woman chorus and on-stage musicians, into this stylized modern staging." 

On playing the famous mother, Bening is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying: "Nothing is more loaded than the whole question of motherhood...Anybody who is a mother experiences that...Mothers that are human, that have frailties and flaws, that's interesting."

Bening, an American Conservatory Theater-trained stage actress, saw her Hollywood fame blossom with each portrayal of an unlikable yet unforgettable character in "The Grifters," "American Beauty," "Being Julia," "Mrs. Harris" and more. She has riveted Los Angeles' theater audiences with similarly complex portraits twice before. In 2006 her turn as Ranyevskaya in the Mark Taper Forum's "The Cherry Orchard" embodied the character's "supercharged sensibility, which can turn from laughter to tears to haughty irritation in seconds," wrote The Los Angeles Times. When she played the title role of "Hedda Gabler" at the Geffen Playhouse in 1999, The New York Times said she delivered, "lightning flashes that illuminate the shadowy interior of Ibsen's most compellingly ambiguous heroine in new and unexpected ways."

Freud Playhouse (in UCLA's Macgowan Hall) is located at 245 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles (Westwood). The show opens tonight, 9/23 and runs through 10/18. Performance schedule is Tues.-Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 18. 

For more information, and to access the complete 2009-10 season, visit UCLALive.org