Eurydice A Cure for the Clangorous Riot of Now

Mystery, poetry, and a philosophy of hats

Camille Corot, Orpheus leading Eurydice from the Underworld, 1861, oil on canvas, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, via glass-o-water.

Bias admitted right here: as most of the billion-eyed audience by now knows, 16 years ago next month I attended the meeting before the meeting that inaugurated the Firehouse Theatre Project. That said, I want to tell you: go there and see Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice.

Leave it to the Greeks. They asked most of the fundamental questions which we in the West are still endeavoring to answer. The myth of Eurydice, re-interpreted by Ruhl, takes us out of the clangorous riot of now into a world of poetry, beauty, mystery and eternity -- and fatality.

Rusty Wilson's direction and the stage design of Phil Hayes build a reality that straddles the reality of wedding parties of the rich and famous and that of the Underworld that awaits all of them (and us, we in the audience, who are gazing over the lip and into the abyss).

The density of metaphors in the writing requires simultaneous fluidity and groundedness of the performers. Watching Laine Satterfield as Eurydice united in the Underworld with her dead Father, Joe Inscoe, is both sad and joyous, as one teaches the other about death, and life, and the past, as they are suspended in the limbo of their present.

Ruhl here is in surreal and absurd territory, and there's a whiff of Waiting For Godot. [The genius of the evening: Sarah Ruhl, Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times]


There are long periods of silence, in particular as we watch Her Father creating a "room" for his daughter using a cat's cradle arrangement of string. Firehouse audiences accustomed to the rat-tat-tat dialogue of the contemporary plays produced there may be surprised.

Eurydice arrives in the Underworld like a 1930s movie star (Laine here reminds of Carole Lombard and a little of Myrna Loy, too), but having drunk of Lethe, knows almost nothing about who she is or where she's arrived.

A stand-out moment of the show is Her Father recounting street directions to what is probably the house he grew up in, along the Mississippi River, and the sensual pleasure of rolling up his pants and wading into the water. In the hands of a lesser actor, this monologue would've seemed forced, but Inscoe invests his entire performance with a solid reality -- he believes in where he is.

I'm not sure that Ruhl knew what to do with Orpheus. He's not Elvis, but maybe Bono. Chris Hester invests him with earnestness and woolly-minded artistic distraction. He is, after all, the music that makes the young girls cry.

In the myths, the three-headed dog Cerberus guards the entrance to the Underworld. The hideousness of that creature turns mortals into stone. What Ruhl reimagines is a Chorus of Stones. Perhaps less expensive and complicated to create than the ferocious fanged and snake-tentacled beast, and for certain funnier, the Cockney-inflected trio provide us with access to the story, too.

An inspired choice for the Chorus of Stones are actors who are known on Richmond stages for lead parts and directing: Andrew Boothby, Jenny Hundley, and Lauren Leinhaas-Cook. The old adage that there are no small roles, just small actors, is given validation here. Sitting still, keeping a focus in a strange situation, is more of an acting challenge than center stage pyrotechnics. They're funny, ominous and weird.

Larry Cook's portrayal of the a bratty "Lord of the Underworld" takes me back to the sp0iled man-child fribble of Trelane (William Campbell) in an original Star Trek episode, "The Squire of Gothos."

Cook's daemonic Very Interesting Man is that kind of annoying party guest who, in the words of Karl Rove, shows up with the best looking woman and makes disparaging remarks about everybody else. Cook's characterization of the Man also reminded me of that amusing un-suave, faux sophisticate stalker that Christopher Walken played a few times on Saturday Night Live. I half-expected him to offer Eurydice "shahm-pahn-ya."

So this is not a riotous comedy -- though there are comedic elements. Eurydice is a quiet play, but not serene; it is romantic, but in the end, existential. You'll leave in a spell, and there'll be plenty to discuss afterward at some dim Fan restaurant, where we cluster in a booth, our bodies warm and tight side-by-side, relating how we experienced what we each of us interpreted the play to be "about." We're here now and able to so indulge ourselves. We won't be for long. An eternity of oblivion awaits.

Turn off your television. Don't check the Bloomberg ticker. There's nothing you can do about any of that. See this play, instead.

I'm going more than once.

Meanwhile, for amusement:

The Squire of Gothos...




The Continental...

Christopher Walken - The Continental @ Yahoo! Video

Carol

My colleague, comrade, and co-founder of the Firehouse Theatre Project, Carol Piersol, is among the 25 arts and cultural makers and creators as assessed by Style Weekly. I'm happy to say that I count a number of these folks as my acquaintances, and have seen, at one point or another, all of their work.

But Carol is the special one for me. Since Halloween Eve of 1992, when me, Bill Gordon, and Anna Senechal now Johnson, (and, to be honest, Jeff Clevenger who was there that first meeting and assisted with technical elements and acted in a slew of Firehouse shows), and we were soon thereafter joined by actors, director and writer Janet Wilson. We were founded on the cornerstone of Sanford Meisner and in as authentic an urban space as you can get: a century-old fire station.


Above is the Richmond Fire Department Station #10, circa 1944, future home of the Firehouse Theatre Project, 1609 W. Broad St. All buildings pictured remain though some in altered forms. The Firehouse lost its bell tower in the 1950s, deemed as unsafe by city building inspectors and removed. I think this was in response to Hurricane Hazel that roared through in October 1958 and took down some mighty church steeples. Wish we still had the tower though, we could've mounted a Klieg up there for our opening nights.

In the image below, you see the place in 2005, from the perspective of the wonderful Lowe's parking lot, where Firehouse patrons are allowed to park. That's architect William L. Bottomley's Stuart Circle Apartments building in the background. Go here, the down to the MAIR, and look in the 1600 block for a somewhat better view. I've always enjoyed how the housings and cupolas of its roof resemble an Italian hillside village.

On the left is the spire of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, which has an exquisite building. The metal facade of the Nationwide Insurance building obscures the pediment of what was an auto repair place, pictured above. 1607 W. Broad, on the other side, is the birthplace of Pleasant's Hardware, a Richmond commercial institution.



[That's Anna, foreground, in a recent production of A Body of Water, with the Company of Fools, in Hailey, Idaho, via their site.]

Carol and me are the remaining founders still associated with the theater and she's there just about every day. The Firehouse is her fourth child. And I was one of the midwives. The Firehouse and its turning 15 in 2008. That achievment is in no small measure a testimony to her role as he theater's artistic director. The FTP's steadfast commitment to producing contemporary theater pieces of the United States, encouraging and developing new work, and emphasizing the actor, is due to her clear vision of how the company should develop.

This gives me the opportunity to push our show opening on September 13, Noah Haidle's Mr. Marmalade. Its a twisted dark children's story that Shel Silverstein would appreciate. But it's not for children. Well, I guess that depends on your kid.

The cast features the incandescent Laine Satterfield, officious and brooding Andrew Boothby, wondrous Erin Thomas, the always excellent Larry Cook, and the surprising Billy Christopher Maupin.

Opening night may very well be sold out at this writing, but you've got until October 6 to see this wild play.

photo by Scott Elmquist

September 5, 2007

Sex, Drugs and High Ceilings

Carol Piersol
by Valley Haggard

In 1993, when Richmond city began to look for a new firehouse, Carol Piersol and several of her acting classmates jumped on the opportunity to create a theater space already outfitted with the requisite high ceilings. Thus, the Firehouse Theatre was born, and Piersol’s been the artistic director ever since.

Piersol, 55, had been in Richmond since 1985, and knew immediately that the theater company she wanted to form would be different from any other in the area. Since its inception, the Firehouse has produced only contemporary American plays that have never been brought to Richmond.

“We’ve never tried to do something for the masses,” Piersol says. “We only want plays that are thought-provoking, on the edge. Our audience is growing, and I think that’s because we’ve stuck with our mission.”

In addition to producing its own full season, offering acting classes, an annual playwriting contest and the musical Firehouse Cabaret, the Firehouse opens its doors to poetry, film, assorted festivals and other theater companies, including the Yellow House films and Just Poetry Slam!

“We try to partner with companies to keep our rent down because we know how hard it is to get started,” Piersol says, “and the city was so generous to help us.”

The Firehouse has gained the trust of Richmond audiences, Piersol says: “Its notoriety has changed from, ‘Oh, I don’t want to see the stuff that they do, it’s going to be that avant-garde, inaccessible stuff that I’m not interested in.’

“The audience understands now that cutting edge doesn’t mean it has no value or will be of interest to only a small group,” Piersol says. “It’s become legitimate. If we approach nudity, drugs and profanity it’s not done gratuitously or for shock value, it’s got value as part of the play. A play can be thought-provoking, profound and highly entertaining at the same time.”