New Rep Breathes Life into ‘Eurydice’

Eurydice

Written by Sarah Ruhl; directed by Rick Lombardo; scenic design by Janie E. Howland; costume design by Frances Nelson McSherry; lighting design by Deb Sullivan; original music and sound design by Rick Lombardo

Cast in alphabetical order:

Ken Baltin, Father; Brian Bielawski, Orpheus; Zillah Glory, Eurydice; Brian Quint, Interesting Man/Lord of the Underworld; Whitney Sandford, Little Stone; Abby Spare, Loud Stone; Rebecca Stevens, Big Stone

Performances: Now through Oct. 5, New Repertory Theatre, Arsenal Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown, Mass.
Box Office: 617-923-8487 or www.newrep.org

It takes a while to appreciate the rhythm and the rhyme of Sarah Ruhl's Olympian journey into the Underworld, Eurydice, currently receiving its Boston area premiere at the New Repertory Theatre in Watertown, Massachusetts. Based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the play's themes of love, loss, and the power of heroic choice unfold slowly, even painstakingly. But when the afterlife is an eternity, what's the rush?

In Ruhl's fanciful take on the tragic tale of two of mythology's greatest star-crossed lovers, we view heaven and earth through Eurydice's eager eyes. Instead of focusing on Orpheus's obsessive quest to reunite with his beloved after she runs off and dies on their wedding day, Eurydice explores what the heroine encounters when she crosses over to the other side. Orpheus, the gifted musician whose singing is said to be so beautiful that it can make the Furies weep, still devotedly searches for the one true musical note that will reconnect him with Eurydice. But his search becomes complicated when his impetuous bride is greeted in the Underworld by her deceased father. A rebel who has refused all these years to forget what it was like to be among the living, Father gently but persistently works to rekindle earthly memories in his daughter - memories that were washed away in the river of forgetfulness once she entered the lower kingdom.

If all this sounds a little heady, rest assured director Rick Lombardo and his able cast balance the cerebral elements of this metaphorical modern day Greek Tragedy with the visceral very well. In fact, the skillful ways in which Zillah Glory as Eurydice, Brian Bielawski as Orpheus, and Ken Baltin as Father, especially, bring honest emotions to the surface of Ruhl's troubled cosmic waters save the show from its frequently plodding - and often elusive - symbolic prose.

Here we have the Electra complex on an epic scale. Nestled in the comforting arms of her doting father, reveling in fond remembrances of early childhood, Eurydice wants for nothing - until Orpheus finds a way to break through to the astral plane, causing her to remember romantic love and forcing her to choose between father and husband. Adding to her stress is a demonic, lascivious Pee Wee Herman-like Lord of the Underworld (a delightfully decadent Brian Quint) and a trio of young, mocking female enforcers called Stones who, in the fashion of a tyrannical Greek Chorus, chant orders in unison and loudly spew the Underworld's oppressive rhetoric. Intriguing twists on the mythological Furies, the Stones are rigid guardians of rules and conformity, made even more paradoxical because in this production Lombardo has cast them as posturing girl tweens. Played with great deadpan brio by Whitney Sandford, Abby Spare, and Rebecca Stevens, the unfeeling Stones are here tragic figures themselves, children robbed of their spark determined to keep others from being happy, as well.

Following Father's ever gentle instruction, Eurydice defies the Stones and maintains her own youthful exuberance, her bright-eyed innocence and impulsive lust for life wonderfully expressed by the mercurial Glory. With her ability to feel pleasure, however, comes pain, and in Eurydice's fated tragic moments, Glory, Bielawski and Baltin - all with quiet sincerity and understated choice - strike resonant chords that find their way through Ruhl's perambulating poetry to communicate simple yet powerful truths.

Janie E. Howland's whimsical yet foreboding set, Frances Nelson McSherry's fanciful and funny costumes, Deb Sullivan's evocative lighting, and Rick Lombardo's haunting sound design all work to establish an other worldly feel that suggests the emotional limbo in which the characters reside. Special effects are potent, as well. An elevator that delivers new arrivals to the underworld shines a bright white light on its occupants and rains buckets of water to wash away their pasts. A sunken trough with actual water and a working pump serves as the river Styx and the river of forgetfulness. Incandescent globes suspended above the stage by thin metal rods change colors like mood rings, suggesting sometimes welcoming, sometimes angry planets that have much more prominence in this dark and ethereal realm than the blue-green textured backdrop of the Earth our protagonists have left behind.

Always daring, always intriguing, the New Rep has once again breathed unique life into a most unusual drama. Eurydice may require patience to appreciate, but Lombardo and company have interpreted Ruhl's mythic vision in a way that causes its images and impact to linger.

PHOTOS BY ANDREW BRILLIANT: Zillah Glory as Eurydice; Zillah Glory, Ken Baltin as Father, and Whitney Sandford, Abby Spare, and Rebecca Stevens as the Stones; Zillah Glory and Brian Bielawski as Orpheus

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