Above: Jocelyn Sanchez and Jenna Zschaechner. Below, left: Jenna Zschaechner and Evan Nelson. All photos courtesy of Keith Ian Polakoff.

Few myths are as romantic, popular, or strange as the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Yet, in spite of how often the tale is told (and re-told) there is something in its bones that keeps us returning to it. Likely, it is the humanity that lies in Orpheus’s uncertainty that keeps us coming back for more. In Sarah Ruhl’s contemporary adaptation of the myth this uncertainty lies not just in Orpheus, but more importantly in Eurydice and her deceased father as well.

Be it parental, platonic or romantic, all of us at times have questioned a loved one’s dedication. As easy as it may be to take someone’s word for something, wanting to know for certain always boils just below the surface. Longing for certainty is one of life’s deepest and most powerful emotions when tied to one’s longing to be validated and have one’s love reciprocated. These emotions lie at the core of this interpretation of the myth and sadly, until this production’s stunning final tableaux, these are the themes that this Eurydice struggles to make sense out of.

If you are unfamiliar (or need a little brush up) with the Orpheus myth that Eurydice is based on, I’ll do a quick re-cap:

Orpheus and Eurydice are in love and they decide to get married. On their wedding day Eurydice dies and is taken to the underworld by Hades. Orpheus is overwhelmed with sadness and sets off on a perilous journey to the underworld to try to get his beloved back. Being “the greatest musician in the world” he attempts to sing for Eurydice’s return to him. The sadness and beauty of his music is enough to make Hades strike a bargain with him, allowing Eurydice to follow behind him on his return to the world of the living. There is a catch however; if Orpheus turns around to view Eurydice before they reach the surface, the deal is off and they will be separated forever. Overwhelmed by uncertainty, Orpheus turns around just before stepping into the sunlight and seals his fate.

In Ruhl’s adaptation all of these elements remain, yet in her telling they are given greater poignancy and are drawn out in their complexity. In her version of the story, Eurydice’s father had passed away for undisclosed reasons and has been writing to his daughter from the underworld since passing. These letters continue to go unreceived. Having held his breath when he was dipped into the river of forgetfulness (a right of passage for all who enter the underworld) he has managed to maintain most of his memories, not just of his family but also of the ability to read and write. When Eurydice arrives in the underworld with her memories mostly gone, her father gets the opportunity to be a father once again, teaching his daughter the family history and how to read and write as well. When Orpheus makes his way to the underworld in an attempt to bring his wife back to the world of the living, Eurydice must make a decision between choosing an uncertain life with her former lover, or an eternal life with her father. The way in which Ruhl concludes her telling is nothing short of masterful.

As in many of Ruhl’s plays, there are surreal and stylistic shifts that abound and navigating those at all, let alone with grace, is no small task. Much of Eurydice is fantastical, ambiguous and absurd. It is also, when placed in the proper hands, quite beautiful. A great production of it requires an atmosphere where both childlike wonder and nightmarish whimsy can coexist. It depends on an ability to bend time seamlessly and create a world that is both timely and timeless. Most importantly, it requires a confidence in in the material’s emotional core, and any production’s conceptualizing and design should be (as in all great theater) an attempt to elevate that core to a cohesive living metaphor.

Robert A. Prior’s production of Eurydice unfortunately lacks that kind of cohesiveness. Instead of trying to build from the emotional center of the play outwards, it tries to do things the other way around and seems hell-bent on taking a “let’s throw everything around and see what sticks” approach to the material. Nearly every element here feels confused. In past productions of the play its necessary sense of timelessness is established by letting each production element find its own style, and then guiding those elements towards each other as the play progresses. Here, each element exists in multitudes of styles, many of which seem arbitrary or entirely random. The sound, costumes, lighting design, set, and performance styles all shift greatly from scene to scene, creating a feeling of chaos rather than one of focus. Instead of trying to home in on the subtleties of Ruhl’s script, Prior instead seems caught up in playing a different theater game for each scene, a tactic that unquestionably keeps things moving, but often left me scratching my head.

Emily Fontanesi, David Weber, Jenna Zschaechner, Jocelyn Sanchez and Connor Tribole.

With his choices for Orpheus alone, one is left with a handful of pressing questions:

Q: If Orpheus is mentioned more than once to be of a slight build, then why is he here being played by the most muscular and broad shouldered member of the cast?

Q: If Orpheus is supposed to make the most beautiful music in the world, then why does it sound like various interpretations of low budget, Cirque du Soleil outtakes?

Q: We all know that men in flip flops are hard to take seriously on any occasion, but honestly, who wears flip flops to the underworld?

It takes until the play’s final scene for us to be allowed a glimpse of what this Eurydice could have been in less antsy hands. It is this production’s only successfully theatrical scene, but it comes as too little too late. These characters are already lost to us and the ending feels more like a profound moment at the funeral of strangers than the tragic and heartbreaking climax it is set up to be.

It is hard to talk about the cast and their performances critically when miscasting and a lack of good direction are so overwhelmingly apparent. Rarely if ever are these characters acting in the same world or even, seemingly, in the same play at the same time and it’s painful to watch students try to make sense out of material without a proper guide. As this is a student cast, I refuse to go into any further details on this matter as it is unfair to them and to the learning process. All of them will have to learn how to fend for themselves in misdirected material. In that sense, I’m sure that Eurydice will prove to be a helpful learning experience.

Jenna Zschaechner and Evan Nelson.

Benjamin C. Weinert-Lishner’s set is beautiful to look at, especially with in its downstage, under-utilized train tracks. Likewise some elements of Elisheva S. Siegel’s lighting design cling to the mind. Both sadly fail to come together and gel as a whole however. The overhanging barn-like structure that is suspended from the ceiling never amounts to anything more than atmosphere. It gets in the way of sight lines when action is unnecessarily played out on an upper level that is about as far away from the audience as can be, further lending to its impracticality. Likewise, because scenes are staged in every nook and cranny of the theater, regardless of how practical that may be, we are subjected to an unnecessary number of black outs and lighting shifts that interrupt and confuse the flow of drama. As with the actors however, it is unfair to put this blame solely on either of these creative designer’s shoulders. These are problems that all stem from this production’s conceptual roots.

Eurydice is a strange and often beautiful work and it is an excellent choice on behalf of Long Beach CSU’s Theater Department for production. This is why it is so sad to see it fail.

There is a often a misconception that when a play is whimsical or bizarre in any way, one should take that as an invitation to pile more absurdities and abstractions on top of those that are inevitable. Though this may prove successful at times, those tend to be rare occurrences where all production elements align, usually under the direction of a master visual storyteller. It is usually smarter to have faith in the source material and try, before obscuring things, to make sure that you are telling your story clearly and effectively.

This production doesn’t just look back out of uncertainty like Orpheus did, it perpetually chases its own tail.