Tag Archives: Carmel Smickersgill

EURYDICE

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Jermyn Street Theatre

EURYDICE at Jermyn Street Theatre

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

β€œOrpheus 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 β€˜Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ would slot neatly into the stage directions of Sarah Ruhl’s reimagining of β€œEurydice”. 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 GuimarΓ£es-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 β€˜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 β€œEurydice”, 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 | β˜…β˜…β˜… | May 2024
THE LONELY LONDONERS | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | March 2024
TWO ROUNDS | β˜…β˜…β˜… | February 2024
THE BEAUTIFUL FUTURE IS COMING | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | January 2024
OWNERS | β˜…β˜…β˜…Β½ | October 2023
INFAMOUS | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | September 2023
SPIRAL | β˜…β˜… | August 2023
FARM HALL | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | March 2023
LOVE ALL | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | September 2022
CANCELLING SOCRATES | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | June 2022
ORLANDO | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | May 2022
FOOTFALLS AND ROCKABY | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | November 2021

EURYDICE

EURYDICE

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We Were Promised Honey!

We Were Promised Honey!

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Soho Theatre

WE WERE PROMISED HONEY! at the Soho Theatre

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We Were Promised Honey!

“It’s a sunny outlook on a very bleak landscape, but somehow it does the trick”

 

After singing along to two choruses of β€˜Take Me Home, Country Roads’ with writer-performer Sam Ward and the rest of the audience, my theatre buddy takes her arm from around my shoulders as the lights go up, turns to me, and, smiling blissfully, says, β€œI didn’t get it.” That’s almost as much as you need to know really.

We Were Promised Honey! is a calmly conveyed confusion: In August 2018 a baggage handler, Richard, stole a plane and, after performing some amazing stunts, inevitably died on crash landing. Ward interlaces this with some very controlled audience participation, and long surreal monologues about what will happen after the play is finished- in five hours most of you will be asleep, in eight hours, one of you will send an email saying, β€˜Great, thanks Claire’ before walking into your boss’s office and quitting to become a farmer. In fifty years, one of you will think you’re Jesus. In 500 years, when the sky turns black, one of you will turn to your partner and say, β€˜Why does it always end like this?’

The evening is split into three, and before the start of each section, Ward gives his audience a choice: We can sit here in silence until the advertised runtime of the show is over, or, even though you already know it’s going to end badly, you can hear what happens next. I can’t imagine there’s ever been an audience so hive-minded and strong-willed not to say β€˜I would like to know what happens next’ so it’s not much of a risk, but it makes the point Ward is, I think, trying to make: Yes, we are all going to die, and the world will eventually end, and one day the last black hole will eat itself and there will be nothing left. But in the meantime, there’s plenty to see and do and say, and we needn’t sit in silence, waiting for the end to come.

It’s a sunny outlook on a very bleak landscape, but somehow it does the trick, and rather than feeling despairing and solemn, the audience leaves the auditorium heartened, in an almost festival atmosphere. Of course, that might not be Ward’s point at all, and maybe I just didn’t get it. But paired with David Doyle’s seemingly godly lighting, Carmel Smickersgill’s contemplative soundscape, and Ward’s smiling self-assuredness, it doesn’t really matter how it’s supposed to end. The point is I enjoyed the journey.

 

Reviewed on 23rd November 2022

by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Mihaela Bodlovic

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

An Evening Without Kate Bush | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | February 2022
Y’Mam | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | May 2022
Hungry | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | July 2022
Oh Mother | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | July 2022
Super High Resolution | β˜…β˜…β˜… | November 2022

 

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