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Blackstone Audiobooks presents  Mary Ernster • Rosemary Harris • Nicholas Kepros • Brian Murray • Paul Sparer • Jeremiah Sullivan • Susan Willis  in The Hollywood Theater of the Ear production of
translated by Peter Arnott	original music William Banks
This production was made possible in part by The National Endowment for the Humanities
In Greek mythology, Medea killed her brother and left her father in order to follow Jason and his captured Golden Fleece to Corinth. They marry and have two sons. As the play opens, Medea is distraught with jealousy because Jason has repudiated her to marry the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. Medea and her sons are to be banished, but she begs a day's reprieve. She contrives to poison the princess bride with gifts that catch fire, consuming her and her father too when he tries to save her. In her madness, Medea "reasons" that she must kill her beloved children in order to avenge herself upon her husband. The boys' cries can be heard from off stage as she slays them with a sword. The grieving Jason wishes that he had never begotten his sons, just as Medea wishes that she had never followed him out of her home. An ancient tragedy of human jealousy and rage that led a woman to infanticide, the most "unnatural" of deeds--a deed that, for 2500 years since this play was written, has been a byword for female madness. The Chorus chants "one woman, only one of all that have been, have I heard of who put her hand to her own children" when she was "driven mad by the gods"

Rosemary Harris

After growing up in India, Ms Harris made her stage debut in New York in the Broadway production of Moss Hart's "Climate of Eden" (1951) and then returned to her native England where she debuted on the West End in the British premiere of "The Seven Year Itch" (1952). Harris proved an enormously popular and versatile player on both sides of the Atlantic and a succession of classical and modern roles followed. She worked with some of the most important figures of the New York and London stage including Laurence Olivier ("The Broken Heart", "Uncle Vanya"), Peter O'Toole ("Hamlet"), Jack Lemmon ("Idiot's Delight"), Peter Hall ("Old Times"), and John Gielgud ("The Best of Friends"). On the small screen, Harris has graced a number of TV-movies since the mid-1950s, debuting as Olivia in an adaptation of "Twelfth Night" (NBC, 1957). She went on to play the rich wife whose husband plots her murder in "Dial M For Murder" (NBC, 1958); the beleaguered second wife in "Blithe Spirit" (NBC, 1966); the flamboyant French novelist George Sand in the PBS drama series "Notorious Woman" (1975); and the leading role in a PBS adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse" (1984). Harris is perhaps best remembered for her appearances in two well-received miniseries: "Holocaust" (1978) playing the aristocratic matriarch of a Jewish family, and "The Chisolms" (1979), as the matriarch of a pioneering Virginia family in 1844. Harris made a striking film debut as the unrequited love interest of Stewart Granger as "Beau Brummell" (1954). She did not make another film for 14 years, turning up in "A Flea in Her Ear" (1968) which also marked her US feature debut. Ten years later she gave memorable support in the thriller "The Boys From Brazil" (1978), co-starred in the political drama "The Ploughman's Lunch" (1983), and gave a strong, volatile performance as T S Eliot's iron-willed mother-in-law in "Tom & Viv" (1994), a performance which garnered her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She next appeared as herself for director Al Pacino in "Looking for Richard" (1996). Currently she can be seen as Peter Parker’s Aunt Mae in "Spiderman."

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