REVIEW: EURYDICE by Sarah Ruhl at Jermyn Street Theatre 3 October – 9 November 2024

Photography: Alex Brenner

‘moving and tender, and the whole looks a treat’ ★★★

The loss of a loved one – the loved one in this case – isn’t an obvious subject for levity. Nor do the nouns Ayckbourn and Alan automatically leap to mind for analysis of one of the world’s older classical tragedies. But the old master craftsman’s dictum that comedy needs to find ‘darkness in its light’ and tragedy ‘light in its darkness’ wouldn’t have gone amiss as this new version of Eurydice made its way from page to stage.

The tale’s oft-told – Eurydice dies, Orpheus heads to the Underworld to bring her back, then loses her at the final step by breaking the instruction not to look back at her until she’s in the world of the living once more. And for a couple of millennia, it’s been oft-told from the male point of view - Orpheus, the man and musician, with Eurydice generally foregrounded as the prize that was lost rather than focusing much on her own thoughts, dreams and feelings as a person herself.

Sarah Ruhl’s new version commendably turns that around to focus on Eurydice (a strong and nuanced Eve Ponsonby who carries most of the action). There’s much to admire in this re-plotting – her marriage to Orpheus isn’t perfect, since he (Keaton Guimarães-Tolley) is obsessed with his beautiful music more than with the desires and thoughts of his wife, and her temptation to the fall that leads her to the Underworld arises from a desire to read a letter from her late father (Dickson Tyrell, affecting and wistful). If there’s a flaw in the story-telling, it’s the reverse of the usual barely visible Eurydice, in that Orpheus rather vanishes, a gentle naif concerned only with his music (one whom it’s hard to see suddenly deciding to voyage to the Underworld, indeed).

Both the literate and varied script and the show (excellent set design and costuming) seem designed to illuminate the darkness with the odd spark of light, but the production rarely lifts from mournful tone and pace across its 90 minutes. It looks like it’s meant to raise the odd laugh – a chorus of stones gurn merrily away, and visually more than echo the Knights Who Say Ni. And the Lord of the Underworld (Joe Wiltshire Smith, unsettling rather than sinister) comes on as an overgrown schoolboy who at one point performs a visual gag the Carry On team might have thought a bit singly entendred (he does pull it off with some gusto, but perhaps it could be whipped out).

That it doesn’t find some more tonal variation is a shame, as the scenes between father and daughter are moving and tender, and the whole looks a treat, using, as often occurs there, the tiny playing area of Jermyn Street to create convincingly separate worlds. But as the Lord of the Underworld himself might say, the show never fails to be interesting, even if a bit more variation in tone and pace would make it more so.

EURYDICE by Sarah Ruhl at Jermyn Street Theatre 3 October – 9 November 2024

Directed by Stella Powell-Jones

Box Office: https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/eurydice/

Reviewer David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, South Korea, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.