“Forget the names — the names make you remember,” are the simple words of a father left in the underworld too long, remembering the love he has for his daughter. They are words reminding us that remembering can be the worst fate of all.
Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice was a play that, on the surface, revolved around a young woman, Eurydice, who finds herself brought down to the underworld in a raining elevator, after being seduced by the Lord of the Underworld. There, she meets her father, who has escaped the loss of memory and life skills that usually accompanies death. He teaches her to remember and reawakens the love she has for her husband, whom she left behind in the land of the living. Underneath this dreamlike façade, Eurydice is a play agonizing over the pain and utility of remembrance, the beauty in longing for a lost lover and silent pain of leaving that memory behind.
The chorus of Stones was perhaps the most creative design element. The members of the chorus were clad in gray abstractions of stone composed of the body parts of baby dolls — a stroke of genius executed flawlessly by costume designers Carlie Crawford ’11 and Artist-in-Residence Jule Emerson. The attention to movement — the stone waddle — and the aphasic delivery of the Stones’ often will-crushing lines was testament to the incredible acting discipline of the Stones (Alicia Evancho ’12, Christina Fox ’13 and Jenny Johnston ’14) and expert coaching by the director, Assistant Professor of Theater Alex Draper. The chorus of Stones was akin to a Greek choir in that they spoke simply the truths that we know to be true yet refuse to hear, in fear that acknowledging those truths will make our suffering and very existence obsolete. They reminded Eurydice why it is Underworld policy to forget: “To mourn twice is excessive.”
There were no weak links in the acting, in a script that demanded the actors to do much more than the real. As the Lord of the Underworld, Ben Orbison ’12.5 flaunted his impressive comic range when his character moved from Florence Nightingale, to Child-King of the Underworld, to a man who has come into his own — he struck chills of fear in the audience with a mere smile at an innocent Eurydice.
Willy McKay ’11, who played Orpheus, the husband of Eurydice and writer of the saddest music ever in order to gain access to the underworld and to reunite himself with his lover, also met the challenge of his character — a man whose music, like sonic waves, struck tremors in the Stones. Dustin Schwartz ’11, who played Eurydice’s father, captured the essence of age and played it clearly and tastefully. His agony was present but reserved, which proved an effective choice since the pain of memory, as Ruhl noted, requires “no emotion but the mere suggestion of a thought fed by the mere drop of words from the mouth, like water droplets falling from a tap, beautiful in flight but bursting on impact and getting us all wet.” Only Orpheus, a master of music, was able to peel at the skin of sorrow, but even he confessed, “The music sounds better in my head than it does in the world.”
The play rests, however, on the shoulders of Gillian Durkee ’12 in the title role of Eurydice. She, too, moved through an incredible range, starting as a lover and then forgetting all of her humanity, only to relearn it from her father. Her journey delighted the audience in that it did not come easy, but she played her confusion with such gravitas that we could not help but smile — her first attempts to read elicited sheer delight as she stood on the “Complete Works of Shakespeare” and swiveled her feet until she decided that the book had no purpose and she
hated it. Eurydice played, moreover, sweet love for both her father and husband that transported the audience into amorous throes that reminded us of the beauty of love and the grief in remembering it. Just as Ruhl created a more-than-real universe of music and distilled truths, Durkee breathed life into Eurydice.
The only weakness in the production lay in its cohesion as a single entity. Each individual design and theatrical aspect was impressive. The costumes were breathtaking, and Ryan Bates’ ’11 set was detailed and intricately crafted, from a raining elevator to a house of string built before our eyes. The lighting by Professor of Theatre Mark Evancho was supple with soft washes slashed through by harsh white specials including the angular light of the house of string and the aisles that transported the characters back and forth between the world of the living and the Underworld. The acting direction offered strong choices that essentialized and paid homage to Ruhl’s language. Other than the costumes, the production did not seem to give us a sense of a time period — the play is supposed to take place in the 1950s.
Eurydice is one of the most beautiful contemporary American plays, and in staging it, one takes on a huge mantle of responsibility. For those who had read the script, they came in with the highest expectations, expectations that were perhaps ultimately unreachable by any production; once grounded on the stage, words lose the power to inspire the imagination as they do on the page. There is not fault to place in that regard, and ultimately Eurydice was a beautifully executed piece of theatrical and emotional art.
Forgetfulness cleanses all pains in "Eurydice"
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