If you thought River & Rail’s final show at the Old City Performing Arts Center would be last year’s holiday special Little Women, think again—they have come back with a bang for one final production to round out their tenure in OCPAC before permanently transitioning to their new home on Magnolia Avenue. For their grand finale, River & Rail presents Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, a 2003 play that reimagines the heartbreaking myth of love and loss in sleek, modern terms. Director Amelia Peterson has crafted a surrealist experience that oozes with absurdism and mad-hatter charm, transforming the Underworld into a theatrical wonderland. Audience members, buckle in, for you’re in for a wild ride.
Eurydice is a quick, 90 minutes with no intermission and a moody atmosphere and heady presentation of its Ancient Greek subject matter. We’re introduced to mythological power-couple Eurydice (Develyn Jayan) and Orpheus (Ian Maryfield), who are the definition of opposites attract: Eurydice is more logical and grounded, while Orpheus, the musician, is a dreamer with his head in the clouds who thrives on abstractions. On their wedding day, the Lord of the Underworld (Ethan Copeland) entices Eurydice with an improbable promise: to give her a letter from her dead father (James Crawford). While the letter is real, the promise is not, and the Lord of the Underworld traps her in the afterlife. Having lost her memory, Eurydice encounters her father in the Underworld, and he slowly helps her recover her sense of self and find her way back to Orpheus. But as she reconnects with her father, Eurydice reevaluates the meaning of life and death, redefines her relationships with the living and the dead, and is faced with the ultimate choice: to return or to stay in the Underworld.
Water is a key element to this play, and the set design incorporates this motif in both subtle and overt ways. The set design by Scott Baron is sparse in an unnerving way that is slowly populated as the characters interact with the set pieces; it’s a malleable, movable open concept that invites imagination. Lighting choices for this production, designed by Angelyn Baer, were particularly notable; stark side lighting added an unsettling chiaroscuro to certain scenes, and the shadows cast on the walls to stage left and right were eerie and evocative of a damp, dark, cavern-esque Underworld. The most impressive set piece is a series of overhead pipes that at key times in the plot drips real water down onto the stage, giving the scenery a cool, industrial feel as the lighting reflects off the dripping, splashing water. It’s the practical effects that River & Rail consistently turn to that add a special quality to their shows, and the water effect in Eurydice is one of my favorites I’ve seen so far.
Admittedly, the production takes a bit of time to work up its energy—the opening 15 minutes feels a bit loose, slow, and stilted. However, once the wedding scene and Eurydice’s fall into the Underworld take place, it’s a non-stop surrealist ride that keeps the audience on their toes. Each character feels like an abstraction of their mythological origins that works well with the overall tone of the play and the production design choices. Jayan as Eurydice oozes a charming naivete that transforms into an empowered self-awareness; she experiences the most growth throughout this play, as a strong protagonist should, and Jayan warms up into her role quite nicely after the awkward first minutes. Maryfield brings a confident self-assuredness to Orpheus, which is also a naivete in his own way. He is the dreamer whose dreams get out of hand and who desperately needs to be grounded. He’s unmoored, as awash in grief in the world of the living as Eurydice is in the Underworld. Maryfield also plays an acoustic guitar live on stage, which adds a nice touch of physicality to the production. Crawford’s performance as Father is quaint and sympathetic; he has written Eurydice every day in a desperate attempt to defy the rules of the Underworld where people have forgotten how to communicate with each other, as many have been washed in the river of forgetfulness. And Copeland as Lord of the Underworld is a man of many masks, shifting from daylighting as a seedy businessman in the world of the living to reigning as a childish, tantrum-throwing overlord down below, sucking on a lollypop and making his grand entrance on a tricycle to grating, heavy guitar riffs.
In addition to the main cast, Eurydice includes a modern Greek chorus in the Stones, three figures who speak in unison and lend misguided words of wisdom to the misbehaving Eurydice and Father. Erika Lee Sengstack, Jacob Leon, and Rachel Bass are Loud Stone, Big Stone, and Little Stone, respectively—comedic relief in their extremely oversized gray suit jackets whose sleeves drag the floor.
In overview, I think I’d attribute the initial awkwardness of the first 15 minutes to needing a bit of time to attune to the tone and cadence of Ruhl’s style of dialogue, something that makes much more sense as we sink deeper into the uncanny surrealism of the Underworld.
Eurydice runs until May 3 with showings Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30pm, with Sunday matinees at 2:30pm. Tickets are available at River & Rail’s box office located at 111 State Street or online at https://www.simpletix.com/e/eurydice-by-sarah-ruhl-tickets-217408
