In a pivotal scene in Cypress Lake High’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice,” Gabe Cruz and Ella Maas submerge themselves in a black plastic-lined trough of water that represents the Acheron or River of Woe. Then they sprawl, soaking wet, on the stage floor as story progresses to its inevitable conclusion. By the time the play ends, Cruz and Maas are chilled to the bone, proving the adage that an artist truly must suffer for their art.
Here’s Cypress Lake Artistic Director Carmen Crussard on why she chose this play for her students, no pun intended.
“It's a really magical show,” said Crussard. “There's a lot of really beautiful tech elements. It's got this very atmospheric quality, and it was just really great for my students. I think that this was a nice, heightened text for them to study and really dive into.”
This play retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, not through Orpheus's infamous pilgrimage to retrieve his bride from Hades, but through the eyes of its heroine.
“In this version, the story focuses on Eurydice's perspective, but also on her relationship with her father,” said Crussard. “So, Orpheus is almost kind of a secondary character in this. When Eurydice gets to the underworld, she rediscovers her father who passed away years ago, and she ends up choosing to stay with her father instead of following Orpheus out of the underworld. So, it's kind of an interesting perspective.”
With contemporary characters, a chilling plot twist and inspired acting from a coterie of gifted high school thespians, “Eurydice” is a fresh look at a timeless love story.
Performances are Thursday, March 5 at 7 p.m.; Friday, March 6 at 7 p.m.; and Saturday, March 7 at 7 p.m.
For tickets, telephone 239-481-2233 or visit https://pantherarts.ludus.com/index.php?show_id=200496302.
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The central thrust of Ruhl’s retelling of Eurydice’s story is her relationship, not with Orpheus, but with her father.
Ruhl was 20 when her father died of cancer. She penned the play a decade after his death and it explores some of the devices people use to process grief, which she postulates as a battle between trying to remember and trying to forget.
“She wrote the play as an ode to her father,” said Crussard. “So, there's a lot of personalization in it. She talks about the past. There's 20 questions at the back of the script, and she talks about her own past. There are a set of directions in the script that are actual directions to a real place that is significant to her. So, there's a lot of personal touches in the story that I think were just special to her.”
In order to focus on the rekindled relationship between Eurydice and her father, Ruhl modifies the traditional Greek. While Orpheus still makes a pilgrimage to Hades to retrieve his dead wife, he is relegated to the status of a secondary character. He is supplanted both in terms of his time onstage and Eurydice’s affection by her father, who spends most of the play reacquainting his daughter with the role he once played in her life and the world they once shared.
“Eurydice” evinces the heart and theatrical inventiveness on display in Ruhl’s subsequent plays, such as “Stage Kiss,” “How to Transcend a Happy Marriage” and “The Oldest Boy.” The scenes between Ella Maas as Eurydice and Gabe Cruz as her father are especially touching. He is delighted to be in her company. He reads to her, imparts wisdom and reminisces about the life they once had together.
Cruz’s skills have grown exponentially over the years, and he is now one of the most formidable young male actors in Southwest Florida. He negotiates the joy his character experiences when he’s reunited with his daughter and the grief he feels when she decides to follow Orpheus out of the underworld with uncanny understanding and sentimentality that’s matched by his stoicism as he lays on the stage for a full fifteen minutes drenched in cold water and buffeted by the assault of the theater’s air conditioning system during the play’s climax.
Maas is just as superlative in her portrayal of the doting daughter who faces the unbearable choice of staying with her dad in the underworld or returning to life with a boy she barely knows and a future she cannot envision, never mind comprehend.
“It's just a really magical, beautiful story,” said Crussard. “It's got a little bit of everything. It's got a little bit of a spooky feeling to it, but it's also got romance and a very warm relationship between father and daughter as well.”
“Eurydice” had its world premiere at Madison Repertory Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin in 2003. A year later, it was performed at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, followed by Yale Repertory Theatre in 2006. It opened Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theater in 2007.
More recently, Ruhl adapted the play into the libretto for an opera, Eurydice by Matthew Aucoin, which premiered at the L.A. Opera in February 2020.
The play’s running time runs between 85 and 90 minutes.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
