REVIEW: Eurydice
- Natasha Dyson
- Jun 3
- 3 min read
“What remains after loss.”
Descending the steps of fortyfivedownstairs has never felt more appropriate than in the pursuit of Melbourne Shakespeare’s retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. In Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl builds upon the framework of the lovers by layering her own story of grief at the passing of her father.
Our underworld for the evening was decorated with the clutter of worldly possessions; instruments, tambark, a stone path and a bedroom fixed upstage. What awaited within was a cast of uniquely gifted actors, steering us through Ruhl’s labyrinth of surrealist settings.
Aisha Aidara is our driving force in the play, her youthful Eurydice in turmoil over reconnecting with her father, her all-encompassing love for an artist, and bearing the brunt of the Lord of the Underworld’s attention. Our artist, Orpheus, is brought to life by the remarkable Tomàš Kantor, joined by John Voce as Father, a chorus of speaking stones (Joshua Gordon, Fran Sweeney-Nash, Miles Paras), and Devon Braithwaite as the Lord of the Underworld. This ensemble is perfectly balanced between earnestness and absurdism, Braithwaite and the stones providing welcome chaos through music, dance, and exciting voice work.
The design for this show was technically brilliant. Spencer Herd’s lighting was haunting and intimate, flawlessly executed to a degree rarely achieved by opening night. Nathan Burmeister’s set separated claustrophobic life and unending death through low ceilings and a suffocating plastic veil. Instruments were cleverly woven into the hoard of forgotten things so that the stones could join Orpheus in accompanying his sorrow.
Music is at the heart of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story, and Grace Ferguson’s score powerfully embraced music as the language between realms. Tomàš Kantor is (as ever) commanding and compelling in their musicianship, their soaring vocals bringing us deep into Orpheus’ despair.
Where this production loses me is its deviation from the text, and to some degree the confusion of the play itself.
For a show which headlines finally giving Eurydice agency in her own myth, she spends a remarkable amount of the show being (sometimes literally) told who she is by men. Intimacy is used almost like a weapon in this staging; Orpheus stripped of his heart and also clothing for most of the show. This production “asks us to inhabit metaphor emotionally rather than intellectually”, but in doing so ignores almost all of Ruhl’s stage directions. An already surrealist script is stripped of any relevant context, overlayed with entirely new settings and directions, making it harder to decipher Ruhl’s connection to the original myth.
Even then, Ruhl’s story of Eurydice’s grief and relationship with her father fundamentally changes the original myth, stripping away the potency of the love shared between Orpheus and Eurydice. If Eurydice finds something she had deeply longed for in the afterlife, the lovers’ journey seems almost chalked up to frivolity. And yet this never appears to be the intention of the play, which is described by Ruhl as a “fresh look at a timeless love story.”
Upon climbing back into the land of the living this production stayed with me, but not for the reasons I am usually moved by theatre. I was disappointed that I couldn’t understand the piece, ego bruised by not being able to surpass confusion to get to earnestly sharing a feeling with others. Maybe it was me, or maybe some days our brains can’t handle a heavily abstracted version of a surrealist play which contextualises a Greek myth.
This thought-provoking play runs at fortyfivedownstairs until June 14.
