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Eurydice (Susan Elkin reviews)

Eurydice

Sarah Ruhl

Directed by Stella Powell-Jones

Jermyn Street Theatre

 Star rating: 2

Sarah Ruhl is an accomplished playwright but the trouble with trying to retell a myth as famous as this one is that many people – most notably Monteverdi and Gluck – have done it so well before that there isn’t a lot left to say. Moreover if you modernise it as Ruhl does, presumably to highlight the relevance, then it gets narratively, and irritatingly, inconsistent.

The story, of course, is that Eurydice is in love with musician, Orpheus and marries him. Then she dies and goes to the underworld. Distraught, Orpheus eventually strikes a bargain with Hades, God of the Underworld, that he can lead Eurydice back to life but if he looks back at her as they walk out then she will die for ever. He cannot resist looking so it all ends in tears.

This production gives us a fine central performance by Eve Ponsonby who finds a nice blend of wide eyed innocence and devastated anguish and manages to make it pretty convincing. Keaton Guimaraes-Tolley more or less matches her as the  other-wordly Orpheus playing pleasing little melodies on his guitar – more current than a lute, I  suppose.

The play feels padded out and is actually too long at 80 minutes. Why do we get a scene in the underworld in which Eurydice’s father teaches her some Greek derivations such as “ostracise” and “peripatetic”? It feels like an irrelevant bolt-on. Why is there a scene in which a rather unpleasant man coaxes her away from her own wedding? And the chorus of three stones in the underworld are risible. Perhaps they’re intended to be comic but actually, they’re excruciating.

And as for those inconsistencies how come Eurydice arrives in the underworld speaking a different language so she’s cut off from communication but five minutes later she’s enjoying a warm, cosy chat with her father (Dickon Tyrrell)? Why, when Hades (Joe Wiltshire-Smith)  first appears is he a schoolboy with a wooden hobby horse? (apart from being able to use the latter to make a lewd suggestion). Why is she told there are no hotel-style rooms in the underworld and then shown to one? The playwright, apparently, wanted an Alice in Wonderland vibe for the Underworld and she certainly achieves that because it’s hard to make sense of quite a lot of this.

Tina Torbey’s set uses lidded grey boxes and floaty blue curtains to good effect but goodness knows what the string is meant to signify.  Carmel Smickersgill gives us a pleasing sound design including evocative sea noises and some suitably hellish sound effects for the underworld

Author information
Susan Elkin Susan Elkin is an education journalist, author and former secondary teacher of English. She was Education and Training Editor at The Stage from 2005 - 2016
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