EMER Halpenny's production of Medea is marked by an arresting combination of intelligence and intensity.

Her approach to Euripedes's work is reverential in that she has combatted the limitations of the City Arts stage space and a tight design budget by giving priority to the language of the play.

She has used a version by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael, which has both a sharp epigrammatic edge and a strong feeling for rhythm and alliteration.

This reviewer recalls Brendan Kennelly's impassioned translation, which created a tour de force at the Dublin Theatre Festival some years ago, and which received inadequate acknowledgment at the time.

This McLeish/Raphael translation is more cerebral and analytical. There is an objectivity, particularly in the lines of Medea and the beautifully modulated performance of the chorus of Corinthian women, which allows the contemporaneity of the play to breathe.

Themes of fidelity and betrayal, the conflict of a male rationality and the avalanche of thwarted female emotion, are powerfully conveyed.

Linda Slade carries the central role of Medea in a crafted and electrifying performance. We see a woman who is alienated and exiled in concrete and metaphorical terms, in Corinth and in her marriage.

She is impelled to wreak vengeance for the profound wrongs done to her, bringing passion and calculation to bear on her course of action.

By comparison the males present as pallid characters, in spite of sterling work from Geoff Minogue (Jason), Patrick Gordon (Creon), Tim Seely (Aigeus) and Pat McIlwain (Messenger).

The solemnity of the production is commendable. It is played, in word and in gracefully choreographed movement, with a clear sensitivity to the inevitable tragic curve of the action.

We are being given an all too rare exposure to the roots of western dramatic tradition, in a manner that renders it accessible and affecting. Its simplicity is a virtue; the commitment of all concerned is transparent; the production is highly commendable.