Playwright: Sarah Ruhl
At: Piven Theatre Workshop
at Noyes Cultural Arts Center, Evanston
Phone: (847) 866-8049; $23 to $25
Runs through June 20
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
The Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice can be touching to anyone who has ever clung onto the memory of a deceased loved one. Different cultures and generations throughout the millennia have retold and revamped its basic story of a mourning musician and the extremes he goes to try and bring his wife back to life. Some end with Orpheus being shred into pieces while others feature a blissful reunion.
Chicago native Sarah Ruhl recently jumped into the fray with her 2003 stage version of the myth titled Eurydice, now in its Chicago debut at Evanston's Piven Theatre Workshop. By excluding the man in the title of her play, Ruhl shows where her main interests lie: Eurydice's experiences in the underworld over of Orpheus' typical musical mourning.
This shift allows Ruhl to ruminate on the precarious dangers of clinging onto one's memories too long while showing the tragedy of forgetting them all too soon. It's a paradox that Ruhl doesn't provide a clear answer for, leaving it up for the audience to think over.
In the play, it is Eurydice's caring deceased father who unwittingly cuts his daughter's life short. Unlike other souls wandering the underworld, Eurydice's father refuses to let the water of the Styx River make him forget about his life on earth. So when a letter he writes to Eurydice on her wedding day is intercepted by the Lord of the Underworld, it sets off a chain of events that ends tragically.
Ruhl's dialogue may be too precious and cutesy for some (especially in Orpheus and Eurydice's lovey-dovey opening scene). Other times it can be laughably rubbed off as being too cerebrally arty and self-important (Orpheus' brief mourning interludes can sound very surfer Zen).
But those who get into the groove of Ruhl's efforts will admire her heart-felt notions of memory, love and loss. This spare framework allows a creative director and production team to richly fill in the blanks, which is exactly what director Joyce Piven and scenic and lighting designers Polly Noonan and Lynne Koscielniak do.
Eurydice features a theatrical world of symbolic strings, hanging lights, water basins and decaying antiques that is very redolent of Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman (she herself explored multiple takes on the Orpheus myth in her 1998 Metamorphoses). Costumer Janice Pytell also adds to the wonderment with a grab bag of costume styles ranging from school yard punk for David Gray's petulant child-like lord to smart designer grandmother outfits for Maya Friedler in faded pinks and elegant black. David Earle's sound design of 1930s music and freight elevator effects are also eerily atmospheric.
Polly Noonan comes off best as Eurydice, torn between her two loves: her new husband Orpheus (Sean Cooper in sensitive new age artist mode) and her doting father (Bernard Beck who revels in his character's woebegone memories). Noonan's confusion over her place in two very uncertain worlds is endearing. It's just one of many superb elements that help make Eurydice into such a richly thoughtful theatrical exercise.