Eurydice

Reading Response:

Eurydice

Before I started reading I knew the name Eurydice sounded familiar and it kept bugging me that I couldn’t place the name. Finally when I sat down to read the play, I read the two page introduction and found myself feeling a little silly. How could I forget? After remembering the story (or being reminded the story) of Eurydice and Orpheus I was eager to read the play because Greek mythology and things to do with Greek mythology fascinate me.

It was a short play that I never quite found myself entirely drawn into. I wanted answers, I wanted the play to be subtle but not too vague, which is something I myself struggle with as a writer. I don’t want to hit the audience in the face with the plot and every single thing they need to know, I don’t want them to be wishing they knew less. But at the same time, we as writers need to gauge where the line is. We don’t want to be so vague that the audience has close to no idea what is actually happening on stage. This play took a different spin on an old story, but it never explained (or at least I never caught on) to why the characters lost their memories once they were in the underworld. Why was it placed in the 1930’s in the underworld and in the 1950’s in the real world? Or did I just make those things up? I wanted answers, I wanted to feel myself compelled to find out what happens even though I already know the classical answer.

What I did like was the ending because it took a different view on Eurydice and Orpheus being forever apart from each other. Instead of them physically being in two different planes, they were both in the underworld except that neither of them had their memory. It is a tragic ending of sorts, though the characters don’t know it to be tragic because they have no memory. I love how writing can convey so many different things in the simplest of ways. Which is definitely something I took from reading this play. It’s a short play and yet a lot happens in it, the characters don’t have too many lines, and there is no huge physical explosion of energy on stage. In other words, there were no huge fights, no big ‘the sky is falling’ moments. And despite this, as a reader/audience member I found myself at times compelled to talk to the characters.

All in all I have sort of mixed feelings about this play. I feel like more could have been done with it, and yet more might have ruined the play. I wanted answers where I wasn’t getting them, I wanted to know the significance of the grandmother, etc. But I’m not sure, these things may have been perfectly clear to me had I seen this enacted on stage. For me it was definitely a good read to help me see where the line of being too vague lies, because that will probably always be my challenge. Just the right amount of information and just the right amount of ambiguity makes a really solid play.