Stella Powell-Jones, who directed Sarah Ruhl’s lively adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando at this theatre a couple of years ago, is paired with her again to present her 2003 take on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth.
American poet and playwright Ruhl (who also wrote the book for A Face in the Crowd, currently playing at the Young Vic, and In the Next Room or the vibrator play) has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and turned this play into the libretto for Matthew Aucoin’s opera performed at the Met and Los Angeles Opera. Eurydice had its British première in an ATC / Drum Theatre Plymouth / Young Vic production touring in 2010.
This version is Eurydice’s story, and Ruhl makes some changes: for instance, it’s not snake venom but a fall down stairs that causes her death, a fall it seems manoeuvred by a mysterious man who turns up later as Lord of the Underworld.
We first see Eurydice (Eve Ponsonby) on a seashore chatting with Orpheus (Keaton Guimarães-Tolley), a beach towel on Tina Torbey’s blue set signalling location. It is an odd pairing for they seem incompatible. She loves books and words, interesting information and argument. He sees no point in them. There is nothing in his head but music, no point in discussion, things are just right or wrong. Maybe theirs is just physical attraction, except that there is no erotic charge between this pair.
In no time for even perfunctory courtship, Orpheus is making an instant ring from a piece of string and they are engaged. She expects to get a real ring later. In no time, they are married, and it is when taking a break from the wedding party that Eurydice meets that strange man and has her fatal fall.
Meanwhile, Eurydice’s dead father (Dickon Tyrrell) has been writing letters to her, worms becoming the postmen to take them to the living. The dead speak a different language, and the river Lethe erases memory of living life, but Eurydice’s father has somehow avoided its effects and still knows how to read and write and speak both tongues.
When Eurydice arrives in the Underworld, she first thinks her father is a hotel porter, but he makes contact and their relationship is touchingly presented. When Orpheus braves his way there, she has a choice: stay with her father or follow Orpheus back to the living.
Though it is always intriguing to see how a writer reinterprets an ancient story, this surreal whimsy doesn’t spark contemporary relevance. Copying ancient Greek drama, there is a chorus: three speaking stones are denizens of the Underworld, but what is their purpose? Perhaps they are there for comic relief, but they aren’t funny. Joe Wiltshire Smith’s Nasty Man and Hades figure switches from business suit to schoolboy cap and short trousers, but is he meant to be malevolent?
What does keep you watching for the 90 minutes of this straight-through, single-act play is the playing of Eve Ponsonby and Dickon Tyrrell. They perform with total belief and carry you with them despite the play’s inconsistencies.