EURYDICE at Jermyn Street Theatre

★★

“Occasionally it feels as though the actors, lost in their own underworld, are making it up as they go along”

“Orpheus was beginning to get very tired of sitting by his girlfriend on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice he had peeped into the book she was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Orpheus, ‘without pictures or conversation?’

Apart from the name changes, the opening line of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ would slot neatly into the stage directions of Sarah Ruhl’s reimagining of “Eurydice”. There is an almost childlike absurdism to the language. A kind of existential nonsense.

Eurydice and Orpheus are at the seaside: a couple of awkward teenagers, looking at life in different ways, but not really looking at each other. She is into her books; he just cares for his music. A bit of an odd couple. They don’t come across as being madly in love with each other at all, so when Orpheus pops the question, it feels like another game.

Meanwhile, Eurydice’s dead father is preparing his wedding speech. He obviously can’t attend the wedding, so he drops the letter down to earth, only for it to be picked up by the bowler-hatted, interesting yet sinister Lord of the Underworld. He picks up the letter, then promptly picks up Eurydice as she escapes her wedding party for a breath of fresh air. Eurydice follows him to his high-rise apartment where things get a bit uncomfortable. Tragedy strikes, and while Eurydice trips on the stairs to her death, the show itself plunges further into a rabbit hole of surrealism.

Ruhl’s intention is to take the focus away from Orpheus and to tell the story through Eurydice’s perspective. She certainly gives her more stage time, but we remain somewhat confused as to whom we should be paying attention to. Eve Ponsonby reliably portrays Eurydice as a woman stuck between two different worlds, but the audience are lodged between differing viewpoints. She has crossed the River Lethe in the Underworld thereby forgetting her earthly existence, even her husband’s name. Her journey of love, loss and grief (although without the memory – what is there to grieve?) is one that she must take on her own, yet we cannot escape the prominence of the men. Especially her father, played with conviction by Dickon Tyrrell. Keaton Guimarães-Tolley’s Orpheus is less secure and lacking passion. Joe Wiltshire Smith, as the Lord of the Underworld, has the most fun. Described as a nasty, interesting man, he is by far the most interesting character onstage. Not so much nasty as sinisterly bonkers. A warped Jimmy Clitheroe through the looking glass.

The narrative is underscored with interjections from the ‘stones’, played with a Pythonesque inanity by Katy Brittain, Tom Morley and Leyon Stolz-Hunter. Bizarrely dressed like creepy nuns, they are not so much a chorus but an echoing backing vocal. The timing of their delivery is often out of kilter, lending further banality to their presence – which we had already begun to question.

Director Stella Powell-Jones bravely takes on all the idiosyncrasies of the script but, even at under an hour and a half, the story still drags – weighed down further by its inconsistencies. Occasionally it feels as though the actors, lost in their own underworld, are making it up as they go along. We do wonder what world Ruhl is creating, and while we admire the ideas that shape her interpretation of “Eurydice”, we are not truly inspired to dig deeper. Curiouser and curiouser we aren’t.

EURYDICE at Jermyn Street Theatre

Reviewed on 8th October 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Alex Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

LAUGHING BOY | ★★★ | May 2024

THE LONELY LONDONERS | ★★★★ | March 2024

TWO ROUNDS | ★★★ | February 2024

THE BEAUTIFUL FUTURE IS COMING | ★★★★ | January 2024

OWNERS | ★★★½ | October 2023

INFAMOUS | ★★★★ | September 2023

SPIRAL | ★★ | August 2023

FARM HALL | ★★★★ | March 2023

LOVE ALL | ★★★★ | September 2022

CANCELLING SOCRATES | ★★★★ | June 2022

ORLANDO | ★★★★ | May 2022

FOOTFALLS AND ROCKABY | ★★★★★ | November 2021

EURYDICE

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★★★★

“Peter Sandys-Clarke gives an excellent performance as the ‘dear, dear man’ held in a vocal prison by his childhood trauma.”

Playwright David Seidler (1937–2024) developed a stammer at the age of three as his family travelled from the UK to the US in the early years of World War II. One of three ships in their convoy was destroyed by German U-Boats. Many kinds of speech therapy failed him until at the age of 16, and in a frustrated rage he shouted out the F-word.

Out of this traumatic experience came a playwright, and also his most memorable work, the screenplay for the film The King’s Speech, which is based on a true story. But Seidler’s wife said ‘why don’t you write it as a play?’, realising that the spatial limitations of theatre would enable it to focus on the key relationship at the heart of the piece. The 2010 film, starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, was produced to great acclaim and won four Academy Awards. In 2012 the play opened in Guildford before touring the world in nine different languages.

The delightfully intimate Watermill Theatre is The Stage’s Theatre of the Year and has a reputation for unique shows which last long in the memory. This revival brilliantly embodies that tradition.

Directed by former Almeida resident director Emma Butler with insightful lighting by Ryan Day, and striking costume and set design by Bretta Gerecke, the play sheds new light on a much-loved and deeply poignant story.

The first act moves rapidly with a lot of plot to cover and many brief scenes, with a greater and more compelling focus after the interval.

If you have seen the film, you will recall that the relationship between the future King George VI (Peter Sandys-Clarke) and his wayward speech therapist Lionel Logue (Arthur Hughes) is the nub of the story. ‘Bertie’ the monarch-to-be is inventively dressed as ‘a thing of threads and patches’ – in a half-made suit that symbolises his status as a future king and as a stutterer ‘trapped in a broken body over which he has no control’. This symbolism is echoed in the set which consists largely of a disordered arc of swirling timber.

Peter Sandys-Clarke gives an excellent performance as the ‘dear, dear man’ held in a vocal prison by his childhood trauma. We see him fail to speak coherently at Wembley Stadium and the abuse to which he is subjected by his family. Against a backdrop of great affairs of state, including the death of a king and the abdication of another, an intimate and touching story of deepening friendship is played out between a plain-speaking Aussie and a very believably austere royal. Arthur Hughes shines as the genial and irreverent therapist, his performance somehow made all the more poignant by his own slight physical disability.

Aamira Challenger gives an elegantly restrained performance as the Princess Elizabeth and Jim Kitson makes the most of some excellent lines as a bluff and bustling Winston Churchill and King George V.

Rosa Hesmondhalgh (Myrtle Logue/Wallis Simpson) is endearing as an Australian shopgirl who gets invited to sit with the royals at a coronation. Christopher Naylor made the most of his role as the scheming Archbishop, Cosmo Lang and cricket sweater wearing Stephen Rahman-Hughes gives a new take on David, the Duke of Windsor who so memorably stood down from the throne as he could not uphold it without ‘the help and support of the woman I love’.

This wonderful revival is a delight.

EURYDICE at Jermyn Street Theatre

★★

“Occasionally it feels as though the actors, lost in their own underworld, are making it up as they go along”

EURYDICE at Jermyn Street Theatre

Reviewed on 8th October 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Alex Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

EURYDICE

EURYDICE

THE KING’S SPEECH at the Watermill Theatre

★★★★

“Peter Sandys-Clarke gives an excellent performance as the ‘dear, dear man’ held in a vocal prison by his childhood trauma.”

THE KING’S SPEECH at the Watermill Theatre

Reviewed on 24th September 2024

by David Woodward

Photography by Alex Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE KING’S SPEECH

THE KING’S SPEECH