Theater Reviews

Feb 15, 2009 - Reno Little Theater's rhapsodic and unusual look at playwright Sarah Ruhl's delicate and lovely "Eurydice"

By Jack Neal

No one likes advice. Even when they should pay attention - most don’t.

And so it goes for the most famous bit of advice in Western literature. When the ruler of the underworld warns Orpheus, who has gone to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the world of the dead, “Don’t look back” and he does, it spawned a universe of art over the last couple of millenniums.

In her rhapsodic and interesting play, “Eurydice,” Sarah Ruhl has cut Orpheus off at the pass. Rather than seeing the legend through his eyes, she spins her own tale with a fresh eye peering into the confused world of Eurydice as she falls into the deep abyss of death. What Eurydice finds in the underworld and what she learns about loss, love and the pains and pleasures of memory is what Ruhl’s play is about.

“Eurydice” isn’t the normal “Arsenic and Old Lace” stuff of community theater. But then, director Doug A. Mishler isn’t the normal stuff of community theater either. Kudos to Mishler and the Reno Little Theater for this lovely production of this delicate play. Mishler’s direction is rhapsodic, his attention to detail – music, lights, costuming, et al – is, if not heavenly, at least close to perfection.

It’s not an easy play to quickly grasp, but with its imagery and emotional allure it eventually gets under the skin. Much like Mishler’s haunting and handsome paper-and-paste set (letters of love from one world to another), Ruhl’s poetic language is only half the package. Ruhl sees her plays as much as she hears them. Likewise, Mishler’s direction leans as much on the visual as it leans on the verbal.

For example, Eurydice’s dead father, watching his daughter fall from the land of the quick to the world of the dead, greets his daughter just as she arrives in the underworld and walks her down an aisle as if on her wedding day. He nods to imaginary guests and comforts his daughter while masking his own feelings of worry and joy. It’s a scene without dialogue. As performed with simplicity by Jeff Chamberlin this short episode is as emotionally moving as it’s telling about what is to come.

The creatures of "Eurydice," in this case a Greek chorus of three stones (Big Stone, Loud Stone and Little Stone), speak in images plucked from their mythic imaginations. Among their many, sometimes lyrical and often illogical, bits of dialogue the Stones tell Eurydice to “Shut up and get used to being dead!” The Stones are played with tongue-in-cheek mannerisms by Lyric Burt, Annikki Larsson and Dave Martens. The dead are marinated in the waters of forgetfulness. Eurydice has forgotten all she once knew. With a quirky wisdom the Stones tell Eurydice that “death is easier if one takes solace in forgetting.”

In a choice duo role, Tyler Stewart is both the menacing Interesting Man of the world above who forces Eurydice’s death, and the zany bicycle-riding witch of the world below who has a shriekingly grand time keeping Eurydice in line. Coming and going to the Wicked Witch music from “The Wizard of Oz” an energized Stewart has a field day.

The title role is brought off with radiance by Lynn Lombardi. Orpheus is played with ardor by Andrew “Wolf” Mowers. They are a most attractive couple. But, alas, all is not well. When Orpheus comes to fetch Eurydice back to the world of the living, she faces a painful choice: re-enter the world of the living, where imperfect human love and the potential for pain awaits, or remain below where she is beyond its reach.

At its most poignant, Ruhl’s “Eurydice” evokes the experience of loss and grief, the need to move on and the desire never to let go, and the obsession to turn and look back just one more time.

The Reno Little Theater’s production of “Eurydice” plays February 6, 7, 13 (the performance reviewed), 14, 20, 21 at 7:30 p.m., and February 8, 15, and 22 at 2 p.m. at Hugh High School, North McCarran Boulevard at Sutro Street, Reno, Nevada. For information call 775-329-0661 or go on line at renolittletheater.org.