"Eurydice' at the Wilma (4th review)

'Don't kiss a dead man,' and other lessons
from a production that overshadows its text

ROBERT ZALLER

Myths are stories that don’t go away. Supposedly, mythology was domesticated by drama, which humanized its divine and heroic protagonists and recast the great legends as interpersonal conflicts in which the gods played a mediating role but where human character, choice and responsibility were primary. The ancient mythical imperatives, however— the need to ensure human and natural fertility cycles, to appease and propitiate the gods, and to anxiously patrol the liminal boundaries between divine will, community interest, and personal desire— remained, as it were, the deep structure of the classic stage.

When myth passed into the form of literature as such, as in Ovid, it became a form of story, tinged with the still-haunting imagery of magical forces that turned maidens into trees or enabled lovers to visit the underworld. On a popular level, folklore and religion preserved them.

Still later, such stories became a means of depicting archetypal human patterns, powers, and possibilities. Small wonder that musicians and poets exploited them, not to mention psychoanalysts. Because myths are infinitely pliable and adaptable, they serve an unending variety of cultural purposes and human needs.

Still, they aren’t just conventional plot lines. They remain magical, and dangerous to touch. Grand opera can use them. Soap opera cannot.

Greater and lesser symbols

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice comes down to us from Ovid, which is to say in an already sophisticated (or debased) form. Orpheus symbolizes the power of music, and the magical capacities of art generally. Eurydice is the daughter of Persephone, the fertility goddess who had to be conjured from her semiannual sojourn in the underworld to ensure the next harvest.

Eurydice is a lesser symbol, perhaps a muse, whose fall into the underworld is adventitious— a happenstance, a mistake, or perhaps a clumsy abduction. Orpheus, as her lover, must rescue her, for he pines without her and his song— itself an aspect of natural harmony— falls silent.

Eurydice, in short, is not an enabler of the harvest, but only of her lover’s song. Insofar as that song helps regulate the natural order, she’s important; but unlike Persephone, she’s not vital. Shorn of its supernatural elements (or with those elements trivialized), the story of Orpheus and Eurydice fits nicely into the most conventional plot line of all: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to get girl back.

Modern feminism has, not unreasonably, interrogated the figure of Eurydice. What does her own sojourn in the underworld mean for modern feminist consciousness? Is her disappearance a covert revolt against conventional gender relations? Can she forge any destiny for herself other than as the helpmeet of her gifted husband?

A grad student in philosophy?

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, now at the Wilma after a well-received New York production, asks none of these questions. True, her Eurydice is a serious reader who thinks a lot and whose interest in words suggests a gift for ratiocination; one can imagine her as a graduate student in philosophy. But she is not terribly out of the ordinary, nor is she the least bit rebellious— a bit headstrong, perhaps, but with her eye on that bridal gown. Orpheus, for his part, is an aspiring composer, his head always full of tunes but with nothing particularly magical about his lyre.

There’s no need of an underworld here at all, since so many real-life complications can handily explain how the lovers are separated. The difference is a daddy problem. Eurydice has lost her beloved father, and her tumble into the underworld— nicely staged in a tumult of light and sound— reunites her with him.

Her father builds a room of her own for her (there are no rooms in hell), and she enjoys a protracted lapse into pre-adolescence with him, abetted by the waters of Lethe, which have partially erased her memory. It is a dull but comfortable existence, threatened only by a lascivious Lord of the Underworld who wears a fire-red jacket and shorts and rides a tricycle recklessly around the premises. This figure may represent an adult sexuality which, in contrast to Orpheus’s somewhat distracted wooing, Eurydice is also fleeing; but, as staged, he is also the nasty neighborhood boy against whom Daddy will protect her.

No second chance

Orpheus, of course, comes after Eurydice, who doesn’t want to leave her comfortable dollhouse after all, and is only persuaded to go when she is reminded of her duty to procreate. Bereft a second time of his daughter, the despondent father bathes in Lethe to wash away the last traces of painful memory, and curls up in the fetal position of oblivion. Eurydice, falling back, finds her father thus, and decides to join him in what amounts to an Oedipal love-death. Orpheus returns to the underworld again, but this time there’s no way out for him either.

Eurydice is really a play about refusing life as such. In the play’s first scene, Eurydice repeatedly tries to coax Orpheus into the water— natal waters, the waters of the unborn. In the final scene, it is the Lethe, the water of death, that absorbs the characters back into nonexistence. Eurydice does love Orpheus, but as a playmate rather than a lover; and when, resigning herself to her fate, she writes a farewell letter that includes his “future wife,” she seems content to give up a role for which she was never made.

The brave and the immature

The production makes the best possible case for the text. Merritt Janson’s Eurydice strikes a jarring note at first with her loud-voiced naïveté, but her choice is appropriate for this never-to-come-of-age character, and she modulates very finely in the underworld scenes. Benjamin Huber’s Orpheus is boyishly immature and then boyishly brave: He too is never destined for adulthood, though he tries to make a show of it. Stephen Novelli’s Father is beautifully judged, and the long monologue in which he gives elaborate directions to an address that turns out to be, like all others in the play, a watery grave, is in many ways its culminating moment. Triney Sandoval’s leering Lord of the Underworld suggests a child’s vision of adult sexuality, at once dangerous and absurd. The Greek chorus of “Stones” who police the underworld— Gene D’Alessandro, Erin Reilly and Cathy Simpson— all play their fairyland roles effectively.

The real star of the show, however, is the staging. The surrealist touches of Mimi Lien’s flexible and imaginative set, Tyler Micoleau’s lighting and Jorge Cousineau’s sound create an integrated theatrical experience unlike any seen on Philadelphia-area stages this year. Movement is particularly important, and Toby Twining’s striking score for vocal quartet and cello is almost a chamber opera in itself. The fusion of these elements-— music, dance, and drama— makes for a production that in some respects overshadows the core text.

I will certainly long remember Orpheus’s brilliant entrance at the gates of the underworld; the slow, failed ascent of Orpheus and Eurydice to the light; and the construction of Eurydice’s underworld home from simple string and balloons, as among the most magical moments of the season. The animating vision, of course, is that of director Blanka Zizka, whose affinity for this play has resulted in one of the Wilma’s finest stagings in recent years. I wish I could more fully share her enthusiasm for it, but when one artist brings out the best in so many others, there is cause enough for celebration.



To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.
To read another review by Anne R. Fabbri, click here.
To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.