4/28/2016 The Justice :: Tragic play gives victorious performance

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Tragic play gives victorious performanceBy Arielle Gordon (http://www.thejustice.org/sta /arielle-gordon) | Published 04/16/13 12:00am

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Talk about a labor of love. During this past week's second annual Senior Thesis Festival, Viktoria Lange '13

presented a remarkable production of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, a play that she has been "completely

obsessed" with since her sophomore year of college. In this classic myth, Eurydice dies shortly after her

marriage to Orpheus. When Orpheus comes to retrieve her from the underworld, with the stipulation that

he must not look back at her until they've reached the upper world, he falters and looks back-causing

Eurydice to die a second death. In Ruhl's reimagining of the myth, which is set in present day and given a

modern twist, she highlights the themes of love, loss and the intimate relationships. Lange connects these

themes in Ruhl's play to her own experience with her grandfather's bout with Alzheimer's, and her passion

for this play truly translates.

In its initial versions, Ruhl's Eurydice played out on a stage propped with colorful eccentricity and

outlandish backdrops. However, in this rendition, Lange strips it back to its most organic state, with only a

desolate tree, a pail of water and Eurydice's bookcase adorning the stage. The unvarnished mise en sc??

ne mirrors the nakedness with which Lange presents this play, a testimony of intimacy and vulnerability.

After all, the tragic love saga speaks for itself-a testament to the anguish that accompanies the necessity of

choice. Upon her death, Eurydice must choose between succumbing to the Stones, the ghouls of the

underworld, or relearning all that she had forgotten upon her departure from earth. She must choose

between her love of her father, who has nurtured and sustained her, and her love of Orpheus, who is the

love of her life but is so starkly opposite to her that she cannot help but doubt. Ultimately, she is faced

with the choice of remembering all that she has loved, in great sadness; or forgetting and letting go-a

calmer state of being, but harsh in its permanence.

4/28/2016 The Justice :: Tragic play gives victorious performance

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It is evident that the actors certainly understood how to navigate these tragic nuances, but each struggled

with their own small obstacles. Jason Dick '14 began the play slightly uncomfortably as Orpheus, the

easygoing music-lover disinclined toward words. Dick seemed unsure of how to relate his character's

quieter disposition in a believable way. It took a while for him to settle naturally into the even-tempered,

music-loving foil to the loquacious book-loving Eurydice, played by Aliza Sotsky '15. Eventually he does,

and by the end the two of them yield such an undeniable magnetism that even the audience aches as the

two are forced to live in separate worlds, divided by the ground.

If Dick was awed in his slight inability to mold fully into his character, then Sotsky may have jumped too

quickly into the caricature of a much too bubbly and somewhat shallow Eurydice. While she often relied

on her perkiness as a crutch, she made up for it with her adorable humor and her ability to be serious

when warranted. While her depth was questionable at the start, by the middle section of the play she

proved she was able to traverse the subtle gradations in her character eloquently and unnervingly. Sotsky

even generates a few tears on stage, yet her tears were well timed and were evidently felt from deep in

her gut. By the end, she brings a desperateness to a role that could have easily been too cutesy. Sotsky

e ectively devastates as a lover torn between her husband and her father-and demonstrates her full

emotional range as the play closes on its harrowing tale.

For all the heart-wrenching moments this play has to o er, it yields prized instants of gut-splitting comic

relief, best relayed by Sarah Brodsky's '15, Sarah Hines' '15 and Sarah Copel's '15 perfect chemistry.

Playing the Stones, the three were outlandish, eccentric and uproarious. The audience rst sees them as

they greet Eurydice in the underworld, their faces ghoulishly painted and their legs adorned with

mismatched gray stockings. Their dark but hysterical xations and neuroses perfectly counterbalance the

intense and passionate scenes played out in the underworld between Eurydice and her father, played by

Ben Winick '16. The Stones are eerily spectral and delightfully bizarre, and they thrillingly amuse each time

they come on stage.

Lange's rendition of Ruhl's enchanting play is executed with eloquence, humor, and exceptional rawness.

It unabashedly confronts dark and unsettling motifs, but maintains the endearing lightness that makes the

play so charming in the rst place. It explores Freudian and slightly incestuous themes, such as the notion

that a girl's rst love is her father.

It perfectly encapsulates the tragedy of losing your words-a complex thread that the play weaves in and

out of-especially with Sotsky's harrowing bellow of "I don't need a veil, I need a pen!" It undertakes the

plight of how to hold on to the things you once loved, and then ultimately, how to let them go. Lange has

certainly unearthed and illuminated the intensity and meaning behind this classic tale, and reimagined it in

her own inspired way.