Lamesha Ruddock
“This is the most maternal act I can offer to this world.”
KILL YOUR FATHER was a revelatory theatrical experience. Inspired by Euripides’ Medea, this piece by Brazilian playwright Grace Passô, transadapted by Marcio Beauclair and Matthew Romantini, beautifully reimagines the myth for our times. The production perfectly contextualises her constraints and curates a show where her actions are rendered wholly justified and out of mercy.
In a world gripped by a never-ending femicide crisis, falling birth rates and the rise of a 4B separatist international movement, KILL YOUR FATHER feels both timely and necessary. The show challenges cycles of replication and asks: what are you prepared to do for the greater systemic good? This Medea retelling holds the man and his sins accountable, shifts the focus away from the new woman, and towards the audience, her daughters. It is a call to action, a plea to change the narrative. The repetition of that plea builds rhythm and weight, forcing us to listen, to sit in discomfort, to reflect on complicity.
Medea is navigating herself and the other women in her neighbourhood, seeking allies in a fractured community. Her husband’s abandonment pushes her to the edge as she confronts the damage done to her daughters, the erosion of respect they will inherit based on their mother’s example. Through Maria Paula Carreño-Martínez’s riveting performance, we witness method and mercy, a woman fighting to define the terms of her own legacy.
Walking into the space, stage right sits a wicker stool spilling out a maroon woolly tongue-shaped rug, a visceral symbol of the body as an incubator. Renato Baldin’s costume and set design merge seamlessly, a kaleidoscope of pinkish vulvic layers on the back wall upstage, evoking both creation and destruction. Pussy brings life and pussy can take it away.
As Maria Paula Carreño-Martínez enters, a steady heartbeat guides her. Her smooth white dress, adorned with woven breastplates, becomes a living canvas. A red rope meanders her chest, evoking the handprints Molly Malone knows too well and clotted bloodied knots demonstrating the weight of womanhood. Her armour acts as an amplifier for the ongoing war on women, from the projecting of justice for Gisele Pelicot to the regression of US politics.
Julián Henao’s sound design infuses funk carioca into the transitions, maintaining the pulse and energy of the performance. The repeated sonic motifs from devastating projectiles to snarling shows the lingering presence of the patriarchy disrupting her safety. Brandon Gonçalves’ lighting drizzles the stage in red, an omnipresent bloody omen.
Carreño-Martínez is masterful in building her world, profiling her neighbourhood, miming the motions of sewing, lifting, unfolding paper, creating with breathtaking precision. Her emotional range is stunning, moving from despair and intensity to restraint, then to realisation, sensuality, play and liberation. Watching her convulse and dissociate beneath Gonçalves’ warm side lighting, the audience feels the full weight of assault. Her pacing and pain leads you to ultimately understand why she must do the unthinkable. It is a testament to Marcio Beauclair’s direction that the pacing feels organic and that the relationship between performer, audience and imagined world is deeply believable.
This is a terrific UK debut of KILL YOUR FATHER, a show that reclaims a classic. KILL YOUR FATHER is radical, urgent and unflinchingly honest.
You can catch KILL YOUR FATHER until Friday 7th November 2025 at Etcetera Theatre from various times (60 mins). Tickets are available through the Voila! Theatre Festival Online Box Office.
Jake Mace
Jasmine Silk
