Letters from Eurydice II

So, Eurydice in a nutshell. Many of you will be familiar with the Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice. A Cliff Notes synopsis:

Orpheus, the son of Apollo and the muse Calliope, is presented by his father with a lyre and plays with such beauty that that nothing can resist the charm of his music. Orpheus marries Eurydice. Soon afterwards Eurydice, fleeing the unwanted attentions of the shepherd Aristaeus, is bitten by a snake and dies. Overwrought by grief, Orpheus descends into the underworld for an audience with Pluto and Persephone. Through his music, Orpheus pleads for Pluto to return Eurydice to the living. Pluto (and just about everybody else in hell) is moved and grants Orpheus’s request,with one condition (there’s always a condition). Eurydice may follow Orpheus back to the world of the living, but during their ascent, he must always look ahead, If, for any reason, he turns around to look at her before they both have reached the surface, Eurydice will instantly return to the underworld forever. Orpheus and Eurydice ascend and the moment Orpheus makes it to the top, overwhelmed with joy, looks back at Eurydice who still has one foot on the pathway. She vanishes immediately and Orpheus, re-overwrought with grief, rejects the attentions of the thracian maidens who finally, in a fit of Bacchanalian pique, tear him to pieces. He then descends to the underworld and is re-united with Eurydice.

This legend has been adapted and co-opted many times by by such poets, composers and playwrights as Dante, Auden, Offenbach, Monteverdi, Philip Glass and Tennessee Williams. Our playwright, Sarah Ruhl, decided to look at the story from Eurydice’s perspective and has created a haunting exploration of the choices we make about love and the consequences we face when those we love are taken from us. The TTT website description of the play is “An exploration of loss and grief, revisiting the mythic tale of Orpheus’s descent into the underworld through Eurydice’s eyes. A humorous and haunting new play by the MacArthur award-winning playwright.” Works about as well as anything else and must, in the end, suffice because, like all great art, Eurydice defies description. Any further attempt to explain the play further simply does it a disservice: it truly defies description. In order to understand it, you must experience it. I will say, however, that Eurydice is one of the most beautiful, spare and compelling scripts I’ve ever worked on.

Our production is directed by Larissa Kokernot who, despite a long list of impressive acting credits and a growing list of achievements as a director, may be condemned to be ever known as “one of the hookers in Fargo.” Personally, I don’t think this will turn out to be the case- Larissa is young, exceptionally talented and will doubtless accumulate a substantive body of work which will turn her bouncing on a bed with Steve Buscemi into an amusing footnote on her CV.

The cast stars Sonja Parks as Eurydice, Sonja was named by American Theatre Magazine as one of the five actors worth travelling across the country to see. One look at her and you’ll know why- she’s mesmerizing. Marc Halsey, who plays Orpheus, recently appeared in Pen at the Guthrie and is one of the marvelous BFA graduates that the University of Minnesota is starting to produce with startling regularity. And then there are the three stones of the underworld, who function as the chorus of the play. These are played by a brilliant trio of actors who double in other (unforgettable) parts in the play. Leif Jurgensen, long-time CTC stalwart, plays Big Stone as well as Lord of the Underworld and a very disturbing Mysterious Man. Vera Mariner, a TTT veteran who has sung with the Minnesota, St. Paul Chamber, Cleveland, Boston Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestras plays Loud Stone and Eurydice’s Grandmother. Lisa Rafaela Clair, late of the acclaimed production of Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House at Mixed Blood plays Little Stone and the mother of the Lord of the Underworld — a woman who has has  “special needs.” The sound & music design is courtesy of the remarkable Peter Vitale, who not only can play just about any musical instrument you hand him but coaxes strange and beautiful music out of household utensils, found objects and cobbled together devices that can only have appeared to him in dreams. And yours truly plays Eurydice’s father.

Next: Final dress and opening day!