“He doesn’t know much about [Orpheus], but that’s not important,” stressed Ngairre Dawn Fair, who will be breathing life into the peculiar character that is Eurydice opposite Alex Menglet, whom will capture Eurydice’s father’s gentle temperament and unconditional love. “What’s more important is the history that they had together and reminiscing about that, [as well as] the beautiful idea that [Eurydice is] exploring: ‘If you died and you could meet your loved ones, what would you want to know? What questions would you have for your grandmother or mother or father that’s passed away? What didn’t you say to them that you always wanted to say to them?’”
It’s important to note that Eurydice was written by Sarah Ruhl (In The Next Room, Or The Vibrator Play, Dead Man’s Cell Phone) as a medium to explore her grief over her father’s death; and it is this very crux that makes the play so very different from the original myth, bringing an emotional resonance never seen before. Ruhl has received the Susan Smith Black Prize (2004), MacArthur Fellowship (2006) and the Lilly Award (2010) in the past.
“It’s not just the fact that [the play] is from Eurydice’s point of view,” unlike the original myth, which followed the perilous journey of Orpheus to The Underworld. “It’s the fact that the father, as a character, is an addition, which totally changes the story. We hear so much about Orpheus’ grief [in the myth], but she’s the one who has the more exciting journey. She’s the one who dies and does to The Underworld and faces the Lord of the Underworld and has to hang out there until he [Orpheus] comes and finds her.”
Not only does Eurydice have a more exciting adventure — because, let’s be honest, parading through Greece strumming your lute melancholically and singing songs about your grief is so much more boring than meeting the actual God of the Underworld and swimming in the Lethe River (voluntary amnesia anyone?) — she proves herself to be more sagacious than she appears. ‘It can be interesting to see if other people — like dead people who wrote books — agree or disagree with what you think’ is one of Eurydice’s first lines, as she justifies her affinity for reading to her fiancé, claiming that ‘it makes — you a larger part of the human community’. Orpheus, who will be played by resident Red Stitch actor Johnathan Peck (Glory Dazed, This Old Man Comes Rolling Home), appears flippant to her perceptive remarks.
“Even though [there’s] this epic tale of a man who can give her anything, the stars, the earth and the oceans; it’s still kind of like someone’s given you a really cool scarf or something,” said Dawn Fair, attempting to illustrate the dynamic of Eurydice’s and Orpheus’ epic love and how it still remains grounded and relatable to audiences. “She says on their wedding day: ‘He’s having a shower’. He’s always having a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn’t have to greet them. It’s like all these little relationship quirks and problems that bubble up; [and] even tough he’s this amazing celebrity who has the most beautiful voice in the world, she still has normal problems [like everyone else].”
Keeping the production grounded has been a central aim for Red Stitch, allowing the theatre company to navigate the precarious territory of Eurydice, which shifts between the absolute grief of the death and loss in an Alice In Wonderland-inspired landscape and the comedic arrogance of Olga Makeeva (Playing the Victim, The Scoundrel That You Need) as the Loud Stone.
“They’re people who had died and hung around in The Underworld, for who knows how long, and eventually turned to stone and they enforce the rules of The Underworld [onto] Eurydice,” explained Ngairre enthusiastically. “They’re stones, so they can’t really do anything else. They bring comedy.” The Stones aren’t the only ones bringing extra layers to the play, Director and Arts Educator Luke Kerridge (GROUP SHOW, Tell it Like it Isn’t) brings a unique vision to the production, drawing on an array of inspirations from revered modernist writer Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway) to Grammy-winning Canadian singer and songwriter Alanis Morissette and Eurydice playwright herself, Sarah Ruhl.
“[Red Stitch] has worked with him before,” admitted the actor, brimming with excitement about Kerridge. She wouldn’t divulge any hints about his contributions though, preferring to remain clandestine for anticipation sake. However, she was full of praise for the director. “He directed a couple of plays for our PLAYlist [earlier this year]. I was also lucky enough to see his production of Orlando at the VCA. He’s very talented. He has a very keen eye for detail. He’s very lovely to work with [and] he has a very gentle touch. He’s definitely the right person for this play.”
BY AVRILLE BYLOK-COLLARD
