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Eurydice Reviews
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"Daddy You've Been On My Mind" Review by: Beth M, Nov 27, 2007 |
A TRIBUTE TO SARA RUHL'S EURYDICE
by Beth Mandelbaum
I had never before seen a play in which the flood gates of my own personal grief had been opened so fully than when Eurydice ended, with Eurydice’s final gesture of complete surrender to death and forgetting, now a daughter finally and ultimately reunited with her dead father, and a living husband’s profound anguish, that I found myself in my own small universe of grief ... read more as the tears kept falling down my cheeks.
During the plays final scene, I felt my head spinning, and as if the room were spinning too. As I prepared to leave, I had to hold on to the rails for safety as I walked down the flights of stairs to the street, my head still spinning and feeling of odd, almost frightening, internal sensations.
This play had completely overwhelmed me. I wondered if this might what the pure essence of deeply experienced grief might actually feel like, taking over not only the emotions but the physical and the visceral as well.
The themes of love and loss, surrender and death, the power of music, the deep anguish of remembering and the accompanying grief, and the obliteration of this pain were extremely powerful to me. It is a play with deep well of richness of experience.
One of the things that especially struck me was the combination and integration of the truly poetic and the playfully surreal images with so much of the everyday. It is a play of fantasy and imagination with a strong sense that we are also presented with a world that we might see ourselves as inhabiting, except for the gorgeous, colorful and magical surroundings, with musical soundscapes and unexpected experiences of water.
I was especially fascinated by the elevator in which it always rains, here the River Styx, which in Greek mythology transports the dead to the Underworld, here an extraordinarily creative and imaginative device used to connect the two worlds. The water that flows gently on to the floor of the stage creates a sense that the audience (if one was lucky enough sit close) is also in water. And one hears what seems like the gentle sound of waves of the sea, as if one has pressed a shell to one’s ear.
String also plays a highly significant role in the play’s imagery. Orpheus poetically ties around Eurydice’s finger, as special finger, as Eurydice notes, the finger on which one wears one’s wedding ring, so she will never forget their love, a gesture done almost as if in anticipation of the possibility of losing her.
And the “room,” created out of string that Eurydice’s father, with whom she has been “reunited” with in the Underworld, but whom she doesn’t recognize because of her loss of memory, a usual aspect of the experience of “life” in this realm. This gesture, like a transient piece of magic, is a powerful moment in the play. Eurydice’s father has also died and lives in the Underworld, but his memory remains very sharp because he has not, I believe, drunk from the River Lethe, here represented by an antique blue water fountain.
While the character of the Father does not appear in the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Sara Ruhl has written that it was the death of her own father that inspired her to give this figure such a central role in the play, as a way to enable her to explore the father/daughter relationship. I looked at the text of the play and noted that it was dedicated to her father.
As Eurydice has lost her memory, at first she does not recognize the man as her father. It is as a result of her developing a strong bond and relationship with him, she somehow comes to sense his identity. Eurydice’s father serves in part as a teacher to her and helps her to regain aspects of remembrance.
One of the most touching scenes for me when Eurydice talks with her father and asks him things that she has always wanted to know about their family and their life, when all were living. I was also deeply |
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| 2 |
Review by: TB, Jul 30, 2007 |
| The most magnificent and inventive play I have seen in years, from authorship to production to performance. Touching, breathtaking, very funny, all in the right cadences. The NYT review expressed it perfectly. |
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must see!
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Poor Eurydice, poor us Review by: Helmer, Jul 1, 2007 |
| Even though the production was spectacular to watch, and by that I mean the set design and lighting, the writing was so trite and pretentious that the play was simply embarrassing. The author's jarring mix of the occasionally poetic text with cheap vernacular jokes made it difficult to know whether the play was attempting to be serious drama or light farce. The updating of classic myth is always tricky, but the stylistic inconsistency of this ... read more writer’s update made the whole outing seems childish and naïve, which is a shame considering the beauty of this particular myth. I wish that Miss Ruhl had either written a consistently modern text, or a consistently classic and poetic one, but her mix made one think that she was trying to have it both ways; a bit of poetry for the intellectuals and cheap jokes for the people who enjoy the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber (the Stone trio, for example). And to add insult to injury, the theatre was so over-air-conditioned and drafty that most of the audience were covering themselves with anything they could to avoid catching cold. Was that also part of the gag? To have the coldest underworld possible? |
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My recommendation:
Don't go
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| 4 |
live a little...just go Review by: macman, Jun 22, 2007 |
| This show is not for everyone, BUT...it has real power for people who are adventurous and want to see something unique. The writing is witty and spare, so people who want everything explained to them, or who can't accept that there are truly funny moments even in tragedy, may have a hard time. The staging is phenomenal--as beautiful as anything you can see these days in the American theatre. The musical score is lovely, and all the elements of ... read more theatre are combined in surprising ways--this includes marvelous acting. And let's face it, there's something bold and subversive, perhaps even feminist, about taking a great secondary character from the Orpheus myth and making her the center of a DIFFERENT story about loss. One of the most moving plays I have ever seen. |
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My recommendation:
must see!
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I saw this show with:
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Recommended for:
Romantic Date, Seniors, Adults
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| 5 |
Review by: Steve, Jun 21, 2007 |
| I agree with Deri. I couldn't wait to get out of there. The only regret is that I didn't have an aisle seat so I could leave without disturbing anyone. |
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My recommendation:
Don't go
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| 6 |
Loved it Review by: Deri, Jun 19, 2007 |
| The Times got it right and the acting is excellent...Great creativity all around. Finally! Theatricality back in the theatre! |
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My recommendation:
must see!
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I saw this show with:
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Recommended for:
Romantic Date, Business Assoc., Seniors
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The Paris Hilton of Theater Review by: Zoe, Jun 19, 2007 |
| Ms. Ruhl's play, like her previous exploits, is pretentious, self-absorbed, verbally anorexic and about as effective as an artificial limb. |
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My recommendation:
Don't go
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| 8 |
Review by: , Jun 13, 2007 |
| I found the show to be boring. It is too bad because the actors work very hard, but the show is just not interesting |
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My recommendation:
Don't go
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I saw this show with:
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| * Review is an opinion of a BroadwayBox user and not that of BroadwayBox.com and BroadwayBox, Inc. |
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