T. Ryder Smith, Brian d’Arcy James, and Maya Hawke in Eurydice. Photo: HanJie Chow
If you look to the theatre as a place of discovery, playwright Sarah Ruhl will lead you on a journey you’ve never taken before in this luminous, revelatory revival of Eurydice, now playing at Signature Theatre.
Though the heartbreaking Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is familiar, this imaginative playwright has found an arresting way of retelling it. In the original myth, Orpheus, a brilliant musician loved by the gods, falls in love with the beautiful Eurydice, but their joyous union is short-lived. When Eurydice dies tragically soon after they marry, Orpheus begs the gods to allow him to descend into the Underworld to bring her back. Charmed by his music, the god Hades agrees—on the condition that, on their ascent back to the Land of the Living, Eurydice will walk behind Orpheus and he will never look back at her. At the brink of their reentry, however, Orpheus cannot help himself; he turns, and loses her forever.
Ruhl has reimagined this story from the perspective of Eurydice (played by the spirited Maya Hawke), revealing a whole new metaphysical meaning to this myth of love and loss. In her version, we meet the couple on a beach, playing together in the sand like blissful children. Orpheus (an earnest Caleb Eberhardt) ties a piece of string around Eurydice’s finger, as a gesture of marriage proposal. She joyfully accepts.
But on her wedding day, Eurydice is lured away from the celebration by a character named Nasty Interesting Man (a creepy T. Ryder Smith), who claims to have a letter from her late father, congratulating her and offering the wedding speech he would have given were he alive. She takes the letter, but while fleeing from Nasty’s advances, she trips, falls, and dies.
Next, we see her descending via a rain-filled elevator to the Land of the Dead (aka the Underworld), where she’s greeted by an odd Greek-style chorus of “Three Stones” (Maria Elena Ramirez, Jon Norman Schneider, and David Ryan Smith). There she meets her father (a tender Brian d’Arcy James), whom she doesn’t recognize and with whom she can’t converse: the rainwater has washed away all her memory, and the dead speak a different language anyway. Gradually, he helps to restore her memory and speech, and they reestablish their strong bond of love. (They even recite excerpts of King Lear and Cordelia’s exchanges.)
Meanwhile, the heartbroken Orpheus writes letters to Eurydice from the Land of the Living, vowing that he’ll come to the Land of the Dead to find her and bring her back. He descends, and is encountered by the Lord of the Underworld (T. Ryder Smith again, transformed into a wicked little boy riding a tricycle). In response to Orpheus’s plea to return with Eurydice to the Living, the satanic Lord-Child grants permission, provided that Orpheus follows the rules: keep walking, and don’t look back.
As Eurydice begins her ascent, she walks through the audience, accompanied by thunder and cacophonous musical sound effects. She returns to the stage to follow her husband, whereupon Ruhl makes a significant change from the original myth: Orpheus does turn around, but in response to Eurydice, who has called out to him.
I’ve spent too long on the plot, I know, but Ruhl’s imaginative retelling of the story is so enchanting, so intriguing, paired with the gorgeous production elements. The stage is flanked by a high wall of tiles in sea-green colors (designed by Scott Bradley), emphasizing the element of water that runs throughout the production (Eurydice is always thirsty; she arrives in the Underworld in a drenching rain; the dead are dipped in the river before they arrive in the Underworld, washing them of memory, etc.). Eurydice journeys to the Underworld in a spectacular elevator, her descent marked by flashing lights. Her father builds her a room in the Underworld out of string. And what about those hilarious Stones, dressed in outrageous, sad-clown costumes (designed by Oana Botez)? They seem out of place in the context of the Underworld, but that’s the point of this play: to make music out of discordant elements, like life and death. Underscored by subtle musical sound design (Bray Poor) and bathed in shimmering lights (Reza Behjat), the production is supernatural, otherworldly.
As for the graceful direction of this fine cast (whose roles are so colorful, distinctive, and memorable), Les Waters displays his deep understanding of Ruhl’s wondrously creative play, which he has directed since its premiere in 2003.
Are there contemporary feminist overtones? Perhaps. Ruhl’s Eurydice is an independent-minded young woman who thinks for herself, who takes chances. Why does she allow herself to be lured away at her wedding? Why does she call out to Orpheus at the threshold of the Land of the Living, sabotaging her own return? Is she ambivalent about leaving her beloved father behind? (It’s meaningful to note that Ruhl dedicated the play to her own father, who died before the play was written.) Ruhl adds a coda to the original myth, in the form of a revealing letter that Eurydice writes from the Land of the Dead to Orpheus, now back among the living. “Don’t try to find me again,” she writes. “You would be lonely for music.” How well she understands her husband, and his single-minded dedication to his work.
In the end, Ruhl’s Eurydice is a poetic and profound exploration of love and loss. Hamlet called death “that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” But Ruhl has another notion about death, through her own experience of loss. In this exquisite play, Ruhl has offered an invaluable vision of the afterlife: a place of discovery, where love never dies.