Thursday 11 June 2015

A Very Different Mythic Inspiration

Last month, I had my first-ever encounter with the fascinating style of contemporary American playwright Sarah Ruhl with a performance of her play The Clean House given at the Theatre Ontario Festival by Theatre Sarnia (read about it here: Stunning Production of a Truly Unique Play ).  At the detailed adjudication the morning after the show, adjudicator Ron Cameron-Lewis mentioned that Ruhl's play Eurydice would be staged this month at Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto.  Well, I was so taken with The Clean House, that I promptly decided to take in Eurydice as well, and that's what triggered my current Soulpepper binge (three plays in two days).


Ruhl's modern revisioning of the ancient Greek myth of love lost, found, and lost again, is told unconventionally from the viewpoint of Eurydice.  But that's not surprising -- there's nothing the least bit conventional about Ruhl's work.  As Paula Wing put it in the programme note, "...she heads straight for the roller coaster. Her plays are complex, exhilarating experiences that call on our deepest emotions."  I had to quote that because I couldn't think of any better way to say it!


Ruhl also takes the ancient story and plonks it down securely in the present day.  This doesn't mean that she includes modern topical references.  It just means that her language is very much of today, and so her characters can be dressed and can behave in a very contemporary way. 


(In passing, I find myself wondering whether theatre artists 100 years from now will still find her work valid -- and if they do, whether they will stage her plays as period pieces or in a way that seems contemporary to them?)


We first meet Michelle Monteith as Eurydice and Gregory Prest as Orpheus.  Their actions, on a sunny day at the beach, are very much those of a modern couple in love.  Their words, on the other hand, lend a distinctly Eve-and-Adam feel to this first scene.  He is piecing out melodies in his mind and tries to sing them to her, but she finds it hard to repeat them.  Prest was especially fine in the moment of disclosing that he had invented music with 12 parts, eager but controlled, as if he were saving all his energy for his creative task.  Eurydice's eagerness is of another kind, the eagerness of a bright-eyed, energetic young woman eager to live in and experience each moment to the fullest.


Monteith's Eurydice is all innocence, wide-eyed and wondering, and so is easily persuaded away from her own wedding reception by a captivating but frightening stranger.  It's a choice that leads to her own death, and the quick shift of the action (still only a few minutes old) to the Underworld, where the rest of the play takes place.


Set designer Lorenzo Savoini has created an Underworld of simplicity.  A gently sloping steel gangway stretches down from stage right to stage left across the back wall.  At the one-third mark along it, a wall panel opens to disclose the elevator on which the newly dead arrive.  At the two-thirds mark there is an oblong glass screen which eventually proves to be a window into darkness.  In front is just a bare stage.  Across the wall are set bright blue fluorescent tube lights, all placed horizontally.  The only other note of colour is the interior of the elevator, which appears glowing red each time it opens.  All else is shades of grey.


Here, Ruhl shares her own particular take on the world of Greek drama.  She uses a chorus, yes -- a chorus of three Stones, played by Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster (Small Stone), Alex McCooeye (Big Stone), and Oyin Oladejo (Loud Stone).  Their slow, maimed entrance across the length of the gangway is a fascinating, stylized procession -- almost like ballet done in hyper-slow motion.  But  finally they seat themselves at the high end, against the back wall.  They do not function like a traditional Greek chorus, commenting on the action.  Rather, they act more like guides and law enforcers to the main characters, reminding them of the "rules" of the Underworld as needed.  Sometimes they sit still for very long periods of time, before suddenly interjecting themselves into the action again.  In one scene, they leave the stage and appear instead behind the window in the wall, watching and speaking from there.


And here, Eurydice meets her dead father, played by Oliver Dennis, and we come to the true heart of Sarah Ruhl's conception.  For Orpheus, the play is the traditional search for a way to find Eurydice and bring her back to life.  For Eurydice, though, the play becomes about her recollection and reconstruction of her relationship with her father. 


(Sarah Ruhl wrote the script after her father became ill with cancer.  It premiered in 1993, and her father died in 1994.)


Here, too, we encounter the most surprising and unconventional tool in Sarah Ruhl's theatrical language -- the use of silence as an element of the drama.  Long periods of time pass with nobody saying a word.  After all, what need is there to hasten speech when you have all of eternity to frame your next thought?


A particular example is the scene where Eurydice has newly arrived, met her father (whom she does not yet remember), and asked him to take her luggage and her to a hotel room.  After she has asked several times, "Where is my room?", her father proceeds with great care to build one for her using long pieces of rope.  These are attached to anchors in the floor, and to hooks hanging from the flies, until an outline of a room emerges in the middle of the stage, complete with door.  All of this is done with an obvious expression of care and love on Dennis' face, and all without a word being spoken. 


I deliberately am not using the word "mime", since it is all done in a realistic fashion, with real ropes, and without any of the conventions of classical mime being used.  It's a key part of Ruhl's theatricality that the most normal things are done in the play in absurd or illogical ways, with a complete air of reality.


It's fascinating to watch the unfolding play of expressions and body language as Monteith's Eurydice gradually re-discovers her relationship with her father, a truly loving one.


Meanwhile, Orpheus is struggling alone on earth with his grief.  From time to time he dashes in, along one or other of the theatre's side walls, tries to communicate with her by various ridiculous means, gives up, and leaves. 


It's fairly late in the play when we are at last introduced to the Lord of the Underworld, played by Stuart Hughes.  He is, of course, the same mysterious stranger who lured Eurydice away to her death, but now instead of a dark tux he's wearing a young child's play clothes and riding a tricycle.  I don't know if this particular touch is specified in the script, but it's of a piece with Ruhl's quasi-absurdist sensibility that she encourages people to "play" within her scripts, in every sense of the word.


And then, the unbelievable happens: Orpheus discovers the musical notes that will unlock the doors of the Underworld.  The Stones quiver in fear, for the first and only time, Orpheus has his brief moment with the Lord of the Underworld, and then he leads Eurydice in slow motion back towards earthly life -- with the catastrophic result taken directly from the ancient myths.  She calls his name, and he looks back. 


Meanwhile, in another long, slow, silent action, her father has dismantled her room, packed up her things in her suitcase, and lain down to sleep -- a kind of second death.  It's the most poignant, heartbreaking moment we've seen yet, but it`s about to be topped.


When Eurydice reappears, the Lord of the Underworld is there to welcome her.  In the key departure from the ancient myth, he comments that she has decided to come back.  She sees her father lying there, tries to recall him to wakefulness, but is told that it's no use.  He dipped himself in the river again and has now totally forgotten everything.  With palpable despair, Monteith cradles Dennis in her arms. 


For anyone who thinks of a play primarily as words, Eurydice is bound to be disappointing.  At the performance I attended, several people left early.  I'm willing to bet that if I asked them why, they would say, "Nothing was happening!"  That couldn't be farther from the truth.  Sarah Ruhl is the type of writer who doesn't come right out and tell you what happens -- she gives hints in her words, clues in her actions, and leaves it up to you to pull it all together and give it meaning and purpose.  I found this play was a fascinating experience, different from any other play I've ever seen, and worlds apart from the wildly comic ethos of The Clean House, in spite of some outward similarities.


This poignant and heartfelt piece demands a thoughtful, sensitive approach which allows enough time for the ideas to unfold, within the performance and within the minds of the audience.  Director Alan Dilworth and the Soulpepper company have done their end of that task beautifully.  I hope I've succeeded in doing mine.

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