ABSTRACT
In Ireland, nearly thirty appropriations of tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been produced since 1975. In the appropriation of Greek tragedies by Irish writers there is a major stress on the experience of women, as embodied in powerful women characters who may be seen as female intruders into the male world. Brendan Kennelly's version of Medea, which was first staged in Dublin in 1988 and toured England in 1989, keeps the invariant core of Euripides' plot, but greatly expands the original from 1419 lines to 2242 lines. For Kennelly, Medea 'speaks for all women who have ever been ditched': 'the cry / of the first woman / betrayed by the first man'. This archetypal role that Medea plays links up both with Kennelly's own personal life and with wider concerns about society in Ireland.
