Eurydice

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There is something to be said for a playwright that makes us look forward to revivals of her plays almost as much as premieres of new work: for devotees of Sarah Ruhl, it is akin to the giddiness of unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning.

“I’m going to make each strand of your hair into an instrument. Your hair will stand on end as it plays my music and become a hair orchestra. It will fly you up into the sky.” So promises Orpheus to Eurydice—a line that encapsulates the lyrical surrealism at the heart of Ruhl’s Eurydice, now playing in Signature Theatre’s production led by Maya Hawke and Caleb Eberhardt.

Ruhl’s script is a poetic fugue on the simultaneous pull of love and loss—a meditation on how grief can be both anchoring and disorienting, a tether and a trap. With Eurydice, Ruhl recasts the myth through a feminine lens, offering not a retelling but a re-remembering, where mythos and memory interlace.

From its opening scene, the play roots us in the buoyant affection between a young Eurydice (Hawke, achingly tender) and her musical beloved Orpheus (Eberhardt, ethereal yet grounded). Their love is palpable, a duet of hearts still unscarred by tragedy. But the shadow of the underworld looms—and Ruhl, with her characteristic blend of whimsy and melancholy, explores what it means to lose not just a lover, but the language of love itself. This production finds its rhythm in the space between spoken word and silence, light and shadow, music and memory. It’s not simply a story of descent—it’s a reckoning with what we carry, even after we’ve let go.

On Eurydice’s wedding day—a moment traditionally reserved for joy and union—Ruhl directs our gaze elsewhere: not to the altar, but to the Underworld, where a grieving father (Brian d’Arcy James, quietly luminous) dwells among the dead, one of the few who still remembers language, memory, and love. “It is a father and a daughter who are married,” he says. “They stop being married to each other on that day.” In Ruhl’s world, even a wedding is tinged with loss.

Rather than witnessing the bridal procession above, we are drawn to a spectral echo below: Father, elbow bent in imagined formality, rehearses the ritual he will never perform. The gesture is both absurd and devastating—one of many Ruhlian inversions where absence is presence, and memory becomes theater. James imbues the role with a paternal gentleness that aches with restraint. His imagined walk down the aisle is not a fantasy but a farewell, making Eurydice’s descent not just a journey into mythic death, but into a reckoning with the past we long to rewrite but never can.

Eurydice, ever drawn to the “interesting”—to peculiar characters and provocative arguments—finds herself ensnared not by Orpheus’s music, but by something darker, stranger, and far more insidious. Enter the Nasty Interesting Man, played with chameleonic menace by T. Ryder Smith, who appears at the edge of her wedding like a bad dream in a good suit.

Temptation arrives in the form of a letter from her deceased father—an irresistible tether to memory and longing—and with it, the Man begins his grotesque seduction. What starts as charm swiftly curdles into desperation. Smith delivers a performance that is both comic and chilling, slithering from charismatic manipulator to something nearly feral. He squirms on the ground in a spectacle of self-abasement, a pitiful yet horrifying metamorphosis that is diminished, yes, but still dangerous. His transformation is more than metaphor: he eventually trades in his child-sized tricycle for towering platform shoes, a satirical symbol of his so-called “growth.” It’s a deeply Ruhlian moment—absurd, unsettling, and uncanny in its commentary on power, masculinity, and manipulation.

Eurydice’s attempt to escape this macabre lure only hastens her fall—literally—into the Underworld, pulled not just by gravity but by the aching weight of what she cannot leave behind. The elevator doors slide open with a hush—and there stands Eurydice dwarfed by an umbrella in one hand, an empty suitcase in the other. Rain thrums against the canopy above her, each drop a percussive note in Ruhl’s symphonic world. The soundscape is exquisite: the low resonance of water hitting metal, the sharp slap of droplets against concrete, the hiss as it drains into unseen grates. In this moment, sound becomes story. No words are spoken, yet the atmosphere shifts utterly—rain as metaphor, mood, and memory. Ruhl’s Eurydice thrives in these transitions, where poetry seeps not just into the dialogue but into every corner of the production. It’s in these wordless beats that the play sings most clearly. Bray Poor’s sound design—haunting and exact—elevates the experience from remarkable to unforgettable.

Equally compelling is the chorus of Stones—Loud Stone (Maria Elena Ramirez), Little Stone (Jon Norman Schneider), and Big Stone (David Ryan Smith)—a surreal trio that polices the underworld with gleeful menace. They are at once comic and cruel, regulating grief with unsettling cheer. Their chant-like cadence and synchronized physicality keep the audience as unnerved as Eurydice herself. In their world, death is supposed to be still, silent, forgetful—and yet, under Ruhl’s hand, it hums with unbearable feeling.

One of the most impressive feats of this production is its equilibrium—each character, no matter how surreal or peripheral, holds their space with equal weight. The Chorus of Stones and the Lord of the Underworld are no mere background figures; they share the stage with Eurydice and her beloveds as full-bodied presences, their emotional and visual gravity never diminished. In a play where tone oscillates between mythic and modern, maintaining that balance is no small task—and here, it’s handled with remarkable finesse.

Rooted in Greek mythology but set in a stylized 1950s, Eurydice exists in a world just a few degrees removed from our own. The period is suggested through music and Oana Botez’s loosely vintage costuming, while Scott Bradley’s set—minimal, abstract, and dreamlike—and Reza Behjat’s incredibly sensitive lighting act as a kind of memoryscape. It’s a place where time is suspended, where rain falls indoors and letters climb the walls like ivy.

Those letters, written by Eurydice’s father, become a poignant motif. Unable to contact his daughter after death, he writes anyway—his words fluttering through the void, unanswered. James gives the role of the Father a quiet, pained dignity; his character, robbed of the chance to walk his daughter down the aisle, grieves not with wails but with words, scrawled in vain hope that they might one day be read. It is in these touches—elegant, ephemeral, and deeply human—that Ruhl’s vision resonates most clearly: love persists, even when no one is listening.

Orpheus’ song—aching, persistent—guides him deep into the Underworld in search of his lost Eurydice. Whether or not you’ve encountered this myth before, Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice invites a new question: not just will they reunite, but should they? The tension isn’t only mythic—it’s emotional, intimate. As Eurydice teeters between the memory of her father and the love of her husband, the audience is left to wonder: can love pull them both from the brink, or will they vanish into the River of Forgetfulness, together yet apart?

This revival, directed once again by Les Waters more than two decades after he first helped bring Ruhl’s script to life, is a poignant reminder that some stories don’t age—they resonate. The production hums with urgency and heart, made vivid by a cohesive, impassioned ensemble that grounds the myth in emotional truth.

It asks timeless questions: What would you give up to reclaim a parent taken too soon? What would you risk for a love that defies death? These aren’t abstract ideas here—they are embodied, lived, felt. Waters’ return brings with it a confidence and clarity that honors the original while allowing it to breathe anew. It may hew closely to the 2004 version, but in this telling, Eurydice still feels fresh—still aches, still sings, still matters.

Eurydice (extended through June 27, 2025)

Signature Theatre

The Pershing Square Signature Center

Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.signaturetheatre.org

Running time: 90 minutes without an intermission