Displaying items by tag: Sarah Price

“You might cry, you might not,” says playwright Sarah Ruhl in the show notes of Writers Theatre’s revival of her 2003 play ‘Eurydice’. Under new Artistic Director Braden Abraham, there’s a youthfulness in both casting and staging that feels like a big breath of fresh air for the Glencoe theatre company. Sarah Ruhl’s whimsical dialog appeals to a childlike sense of wonder and her bittersweet version of this classic story may unlock parts of yourself hidden away by grown-up practicalities.

We all know the Greek mythology of Orpheus and Eurydice in which a man tries to bring his beloved bride back from the dead with the sound of his music. If he can avoid looking back at her, she can follow him out of the underworld. Easier said than done.

Sarah Ruhl’s play borrows the names and framework of the Greek tragedy, but her quirky adaptation is aimed at a modern audience. In the twenty years since this play was written, Sarah Ruhl has become a regular fixture of contemporary theatre and has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer. Her unique style of balancing small-scale spectacle with arrestingly poetic observations about life is what continues to make her work popular with audiences.

‘Eurydice’ is immediately endearing because of the well-honed aesthetic created by Braden Abraham and scenic designer Courtney O’Neill. Minimal staging makes big moments like an elevator that rains all the more theatrical. Solid casting, especially in the lead roles, makes this production even more loveable.

Sarah Price plays the title character with Kenneth La’Ron Hamilton as her Orpheus. The pair are impeccably styled by Danielle Nieves. Chic fashion combined with great chemistry, it’s nearly impossible to keep your eyes off. Price is perfectly charming throughout and shows a lot of range. Her co-star is equally compelling and together they make a good case for enduring love.

There’s a line in the play at Eurydice and Orpheus’ wedding in which she says, “Weddings are for fathers and daughters.” With that idea in mind, Ruhl richly draws Eurydice’s father into the underworld, and they get to reconnect in the afterlife. These are some of the play’s most emotionally charged moments. John Gregorio plays the role of her father barefoot and vulnerable in a way that men of a certain age are rarely written. It’s here that Ruhl veers from the source material and allows this play to really be an examination of her own life.

As the playwright said, you may cry, you may not, but you will leave with a romantic feeling. Between the spectacle created on stage and the full swath of emotions illicited by the cast, there’s a lot to unpack. Sarah Ruhl’s play has aged well and it’s exciting to see one of her earlier works done to such incredible standards at a theater not far from where she grew up. Writers Theatre’s production feels like a full-circle moment in this decorated playwright’s career.

For tickets and/or more show information, click here.

Before I set foot in the Goodman’s Owen Theatre to see the Chicago premier of Sarah DeLappe’s acclaimed play The Wolves, I tried not to read or hear or learn too much about it. I knew it had been a finalist for a Pulitzer, and won other awards. I knew it was about a girls’ high school soccer team. And that was about it.

The first tidbit informed my own expectations – this ought to be good, I figured. And the second informed who I’d bring along – my own 14-year-old soccer-playing daughter. I was excited that the subject matter might excite her, sure, but was more intent on using her as a litmus test for not just the play’s quality, but its authenticity. And boy, did we both find that it delivered on both counts.

While the play’s 20-something playwright and cast might seem like whippersnappers to an old dude like me, their ilk are positively elderly to a teen. After the play, my daughter admitted she’d been worried that the presentation would be the usual – what old people think young life is like these days. But The Wolves portrayed young life – the young life of today, of yesterday, of time eternal – in a way both dad and daughter found realistic. That is, the play portrayed life realistically.

Sarah DeLappe’s script sets up this portrayal like a champ. After the play, I read that DeLappe was influenced by old war movies – the kind where a gang of guys gain personal revelations in the face of greater situations – and I can see that. I also sensed the influence of 12 Angry Men or Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs – art that finds greater truths by plopping a disparate troupe of characters into a script. But instead of machine guns and military rations, instead of a jury room or a bank heist, the troupe on the Goodman’s stage was armed with shin guards and phones and backpacks and headbands. But the idea was the same – flesh out a story by fleshing out the people telling it. DeLappe tells her story through her girls’ banter as they stretch and warmup before a series of soccer games. Her gift for said banter is something else – making it sound like how not just girls talk, but how people talk, as the characters flit from discussions of world events to feminine products, from hopes and dreams for the future to the sex and sexuality that seems so pressing in their present. Talk goes from Pol Pot to periods, from weirdoes who live in “yogurts” to punk rock chicks who lick coffeehouse microphones. The stuff real people talk about. And how real people talk about that stuff.

And, more than any play I can remember, director Vanessa Stalling’s production of a team shows it takes a team to pull it off. First off, the cast is great. Those grown-up ladies onstage could totally, like, pass as a gaggle of teen girls. And that’s not to belittle them or the material they’re working with. Most likely because I’m a nerd, myself, I connected with Sarah Price’s neurotic know-it-all, #11 (yes, the characters are only identified by jersey number, further enforcing the team concept, and further highlighting how both script and cast breathe life into these nameless roles). As the team captain, #25, Isa Arciniegas is – to continue the earlier war motif – Pattonesque in a Napoleanic package. Cydney Moody’s #8 is the moody one. Angela Alise’s #00 is the lonely goalkeeper. Erin O’Shea is the red-headed, homeschooled, yogurt-livin’ outsider (think Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls, except with mad ball-handling skills). And the heart and soul of the team are Natalie Joyce and Aurora Real de Asua. Joyce’s #7 has the mouth of a sailor but the problems and insecurities of a girl, while #14 is the ego to 7’s adolescent id. The teammates kick around conversations as feverishly and randomly as they do their soccer balls, again making it sound not just like how high school girls talk, but how people interact.

The teamwork on display does not stop with the script and its interpreters, however. Collette Pollard’s set gave this soccer dad, who’s spent too much time hanging out at fields both outdoors and under domes, flashbacks. Lighting by Keith Parham is spot on, as are the musical choices by sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, both providing energy and intensity that match the actors’.

And so, this whole team comes together to not just tell a story of young girls, but of people. What starts as dissonant and diverse digressions between types and tropes turns into a realistic back-and-forth you’d hear not just on the field or in the mall or in a classroom, but at work, on the train, in the checkout line, on the street. Given great material to work with, the cast and crew of the Goodman Theatre’s production of Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves give us something that’s funny, sad, uncomfortable, cute, ugly, and beautiful – that is, art that pulls off the rare feat of feeling like real life. And, like, my teen daughter seconds that!

*Extended through March 18th