Praise for the Reimagined Myth of "Eurydice"

In most tellings of the myth about the ill-fated love story between Orpheus and Eurydice that famously has him going to the underworld to bring her back from the dead, he gets top billing and sometimes he even flies solo in the title as in the 17th century opera “L'Orfeo” or the 1959 film “Black Orpheus.” But that’s not the case with Sarah Ruhl’s 2003 play Eurydice, which is currently being revived at Signature Theatre.  

Ruhl's version not only centers the story on Eurydice but offers a rival for her affection in the form of her dead father whose love for his daughter is so strong that he maintains his memories of their times together on earth even though it’s made clear that such recollections are usually wiped away in the afterlife.

Ruhl wrote the play while she was mourning the death of her own father and those feelings of grief and longing ripple through Eurydice. She had originally intended to be a poet and Ruhl's plays, particularly her early work, sometimes have the enigmatic quality of modernist verse, which can make them challenging to grasp. 

But the director Les Waters has made a specialty of translating Ruhl’s works, having staged 14 productions of them (click here to read an interview with the two of them). This is Waters' third go at Eurydice and although I didn’t see his earlier ones or the opera that Ruhl created in 2020 with the composer Matthew Aucoin, it’s hard to imagine a more hauntingly effective production than this.

That’s due in large part to the moving performances by Maya Hawke in the title role and Brian D’Arcy James as her father. There’s been a lot of badmouthing about nepo babies, the children of famous people who get prominent roles in movies and plays, and I confess that I rolled my eyes when I heard that Hawke was getting this one. But what’s seldom said in such conversations is that—credit nature or nurture—talent sometimes runs in families. 

Or at least so it seems with Hawke, the daughter of the much-acclaimed actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, who imbues Eurydice with a passionate intelligence that allows her to be simultaneously feisty and vulnerable and totally deserving of having the play named after her (click here for more about the actress). 

I had no reservations about D’Arcy James, who I’m convinced can do anything. And here he makes the father the ideal parent we all yearn to have as he tenderly reassures Eurydice when she arrives in the afterlife, patiently rekindles their relationship and then selflessly lets her go when Orpheus comes to reclaim her.

There are elements in this production—the commedia-costumed chorus called the Stones, the tricycle-riding Lord of the Underworld—that still left me scratching my head. But perhaps because I’m still working my way through a profound loss of my own, I found particular comfort in the play’s final image that suggests that in the end, and even beyond in oblivion, real love survives.