(BROOKS ATKINSON THEATER; 1,044 SEATS; $80 TOP) NEW YORK A Roger Berlind, James M. Nederlander, Daryl Roth and Scott Rudin presentation, by arrangement with Max Weitzenhoffer, Nica Burns, Old Vic Prods. and Jedediah Wheeler, of the Abbey Theater production of the play...

...

American "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan called for the closure of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as she and other activists arrived here Saturday to draw attention to the nearly 400 terror suspects held at the remote site.Sheehan is among 12 human rights...

American "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan called for the closure of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as she and other activists arrived here Saturday to draw attention to the nearly 400 terror suspects held at the remote site.Sheehan is among 12 human rights...

Pasolini's Medea exemplifies how an artist uses a discernible conceptual structure as the formative and organizing principle of his work. For Pasolini, this conceptual structure is a nondogmatic Marxist mode of analysis of individuals in society and cultures in history. (p. 54) Free from a dependence on dialogue and verbal imagery, Pasolini presents a larger mythic world in a way that film does best: by portraying powerful visual imagery in action. (pp. 54-5)

Pier Paolo Pasolini's very free, very barbaric "Medea," which is less an adaptation of the Euripides play than an interpretation of it, is not completely successful, but it is … full of eccentric imagination and real passion…. If your priorities are such, Pasolini's "Medea" can be an excellent argument for the kind of literal movie made by [Michael] Cacoyannis….

Medea is something of a relief in that it asserts an ideological dimension whose willed abandonment has rendered the trilogy a charming exercise in fausse naïveté. In this five-year-old work, Pasolini is still conceding a social dimension to his elected myths: not, in this instance, an imaginative world "earthy, frolicsome, crowded with people and full of light" (his description of Decameron) but a stark confrontation between cultures sacred and profane, agrarian and bourgeois, &...