Sarah Ruhl's "Eurydice": Love, death and a myth retold

It is an ancient story of the power, and limits, of love.

Orpheus adored Eurydice. But soon after they wed she died, and Orpheus was so bereft the Greek gods took pity and gave him a chance to rescue her from the Underworld — only if he did so without glancing back at her.

Orpheus failed his mission, but his beloved Eurydice lives on in the haunting myth, recounted 2,000 years ago in Ovid's "Metamorphoses."

Since then, the romantic story has inspired operas (by Monteverdi, Haydn, Phillip Glass), hallowed verses (by Dante, Rilke, Auden), and classic movies (Jean Cocteau's "Orphée," and the Marcel Camus film "Black Orpheus").

But Sarah Ruhl's play "Eurydice," by all accounts, is unique in its approach to the myth. Here it's conveyed from the seriocomic angle of Eurydice — who usually plays second lyre to her ardent musician-husband, Orpheus.

"There have been so many renditions of the myth," said Ruhl by phone from her New York City home, "and every sort of male artist has kind of cut their teeth on Eurydice. But you don't hear much about her from a woman's viewpoint."

So is Ruhl's Eurydice more of a heroine than a passive love object? "Your question makes me want to cry, and I don't know why," she answered. "No one has ever asked me that.

"I think Eurydice is complicated because she's human, which was the point of me revisiting her. Anyone who bravely faces her fate could be heroic. Maybe that's all we can ask of someone."

Warmly received since its 2003 premiere, "Eurydice" is having its Seattle debut at ACT Theatre, opening Thursday. It is the second play ACT has mounted by the pistol-hot Ruhl, who at 34 has already won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and been shortlisted for a Pulitzer.

ACT's 2007 staging of "The Clean House," Ruhl's quirky tale of a soulful Brazilian housekeeper and her tight-wound female employer, was a box-office winner. And like that work, "Eurydice" delves into the big subjects that continually fascinate Ruhl: love and death and all that binds them, explored with whimsical humor and poetic intensity.

A Chicago-area native, Ruhl originally intended to become an English prof and a poet. Her conversation is pleasantly dotted with literary references, yet free of academic snobbery.

"I've always been fascinated by Greek myth, and I like that everyone knows a story I'm telling," she mused. "There's a kind of structural vibration in knowing what the bones of the story are, but not how it's going to be told. It's the change-ups that are the sticking points."

An important third figure in this play is Eurydice's father, who reunites in death with his daughter. Also among the characters: a chorus of talking, weeping stones.

"They're funny, at least I hope they're funny. The concept is totally absurd, but it's a gesture toward dramatic accessibility. I want to make the story visceral enough for a modern audience."

As in fairy tales, Ruhl's directions tend to be open-ended, so a director has room to maneuver. At ACT, Allison Narver, who also mounted "Clean House" there, directs "Eurydice."

"I like being surprised by productions of 'Eurydice,' " Ruhl said. "In New York, the show had an entire wall of letters written from living people to dead people. I love something so visual and theatrical that isn't about big budgets or special effects but imagination."

Ruhl finds it hard to"classify my work as comedy, drama or tragedy" — and so do critics. "Eurydice" won raves anyway, as did her 2008 play, "Dead Man's Cell Phone"; her biblically inspired "Passion Play, a Cycle"; and the nationally popular "Clean House" (which Ruhl worked on at Seattle Repertory Theatre, during its 2003 Women's Playwright Festival).

New York Times critic Charles Isherwood saluted "Eurydice's" mix of "visual allure, playfulness and emotional clarity," likening it the work of another Chicagoan with a mythic bent, theatrical auteur Mary Zimmerman.

Ruhl began writing "Eurydice" as a grad student at Brown University. "My father, a real inspiration for me, died of bone cancer when I was 20. He was very graceful about dealing with the diagnosis and living with the pain, which put people at ease, and brought people together."

Recalled Ruhl, "Having someone I loved and adored die ... so early, there seemed to be no cultural outlet to deal with that except therapy. I thought, 'Why should this be pathologized?' We're all going to do the dying thing someday. It felt like there was no cultural ritual to organize my feelings. Theater became that for me."

Ruhl got to know the drama world through her actor mother, who performs in Chicago playhouses. Young Sarah studied acting briefly, too, "at the Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by Jeremy Piven's mom and dad." But she found it "wasn't quite a fit for me. I didn't like being watched. And ever since I was little, I was always writing short stories and bits of poetry."

Now Ruhl's new plays are eagerly awaited. Her next, "In the Next Room," which will premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in January, tackles a curious topic: the history of sexual vibrators.

Ruhl looks forward to "a little time off" soon, spent in her Manhattan digs with her psychiatrist husband and their 2-year-old daughter. "I want to make sure the next play I write," she says, "is what I really want to be writing."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com