In Selina Cartmell’s powerful production of Robin Robertson’s text, Corinth could be any middle-class neighbourhood in the present, where the family who seems to have it all suddenly implodes. Medea (Eileen Walsh), the Barbarian blow-in, blends in with the locals in her stylish clothes and tasteful home, but when Jason (Stuart Graham) decides to take another wife, she brings the city to its knees.

There’s nowhere to hide in this house of horrors, not even under the stairs where the protagonist eventually kills her sons. In Paul O’Mahony’s split-level stage, the façade is peeled back to reveal a warren of open rooms, connected by scaffolding and wooden frames. The action shifts between four main spaces, sometimes spilling down the large staircase that cuts through the centre.

Cartmell gives us some beautiful scenes in this production, no more so than when the performers freeze in different rooms like uncanny family photographs. On another occasion, the Chorus (Olwen Fouéré) glides in slow motion across the set, her gracefulness counter-pointing the unfolding violence. Adults playing with toy soldiers and miniature ships eerily remind us that this is anything but child’s play. Conor Linehan’s score effectively sets the atmosphere, and could only be objected to for its constancy.

The cast is uniformly strong, and Walsh in exceptional in the title role. Her Medea is savage and poetic, seductive and terrifying, and her voice seems to come from underground.