Make The Most Of Your Voice Blog

What is ATC’s production of Eurydice about?  The catastrophe of the death of one of a young couple, madly in love and just starting out?   The frustration of a parent not being able to get through to their child?  The victory of death over life?  Fear of the unknown?  Is it attempting to address all of these?

The most exciting part of the play is when Eurydice (played by Ony Uhiara in a way that says she’s going to have a great career), is enticed away from her wedding celebration into a penthouse apartment by a “nasty, interesting man” who gives her a letter from her dead father and tries to seduce her.  She gets away but trips and falls down the stairs as she hurries,  fatally injuring herself.
She cascades down into the underworld of death.

Once in the underworld she meets her father, who comforts her.  Geff Francis who plays her father gives the most powerful and moving performance of the play.  In this scene I waited in vain to find out what the father’s letter to Eurydice was about.  She had lost her life retrieving it but the audience was left in the dark as to what was in it.  The renowned scene where Orpheus comes to rescue Eurydice from the underworld, something that can only be done if he doesn’t turn around to look at her, is well executed.  Eurydice is encouraged by her father and the Stones (wonderfully played by Marsha Henry, Becci Gemmell and Ben Addis) to follow him, and not turn around, but Eurydice is unsure that it is Orpheus (and who can blame her after all the trickery she’s been subjected to).   It seems she can’t hear Orpheus’ music and so she calls to him and he turns round to look at her.   She is propelled back into an underworld that for some reason known to the director is worse than before.  Her father has gone for a second dunk in the river and lies supine and senseless, when Eurydice finds him she goes the same route and symbolically splashes her face with water for the second dunk in the river.  She lies down next to her father.  Do they go to an under, underworld?  We, the audience don’t know.

I would have welcomed a prologue given by the man who plays the several different parts of the “nasty” of the piece (Rhys Rusbatch) inviting us to take part in this story and giving an outline of the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus.  Given that so much is said in the play about Orpheus’s music it would have been great to hear music that we could immediately recognise him by.  There are some lovely tunes throughout but no signature music that gives him the magnificence he needs to establish him as a virtuoso.  We are told that the music is heard in rain drops in the underworld and we do hear discordant sounds, but we the audience know through the dialogue and action that Eurydice is in the underworld, we need a burst of the real stuff when Orpheus is involved.

The play is set in the 50s and the author’s note  that “Euydice and Orpheus should be played as though they are a little too young and a little too in love”, has been taken a little too seriously by the director.  There is a lovely moment at the beginning when they are lying down and there is the calm of the certainty of love between them, but this is soon lost in their high jinx playing.  Osi Okerafor playing Orpheus, has a particularly difficult job here as you can sense the feeling of a good actor trying to get out.

This production overflows with action and movement and it is wonderfully set.  In the end does it matter what the crux of it was about?  Like a good painting the viewer is left to use their own perception.

Frances Parkes