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American Sign Language interpreters have been used in all kind of places — news conferences, political speeches, theater — but the way City Lights Theater Company is using them in Sarah Ruhl’s brilliant “Eurydice” is quite special, and delightful.
Rather than just having one interpreter standing off to the side, which asks hearing-impaired audience members to spin their heads madly to track both dialogue and action, director Lisa Mallette has cast American Sign Language interpreters for each of the seven characters.
And they don’t just stand there, interpreting. Instead, they are all parts in the play. Essentially, each role is double-cast — one speaking English, one using ASL.
It adds a human richness to Ruhl’s already beautiful “three-dimension poem,” which is an ode to love and the desperation of love lost to death.
When beautiful young Lauren Rhodes, as Eurydice, enters the set with her boyfriend, the musical Orpheus (played by Robert Sean Campbell, signed by Stephanie Foisy), she is accompanied by the beautiful young Leah Cohen, who signs for her.
It is endearing watching Cohen mirroring and dramatizing Rhodes’s words and movements. When Orpheus accidentally offends Eurydice, both women turn their faces away. It’s fun to see.
And as the show progresses, Eurydice and her signing sister help each other in surprising, often subtle ways — in the Underworld, a letter is on the ground (carried by a worm from the heartbroken Orpheus), and the acolyte picks it up and hands it to Eurydice. They both carry their one, empty suitcase, then sit in it together.
The ancient story of Orpheus has some variations when it comes to the death of his beloved, Eurydice. Ruhl adds her own. On Eurydice’s wedding day, she is wooed by the Interesting Man to his all-stairs, no-elevator penthouse. When she figures out that he is bad, she falls to her death.
Ruhl concentrates mostly on Eurydice, and what happens to her in the Underworld. Orpheus is still around, mourning his lost love and vowing to find her, but Ruhl’s story expands to include the love of Eurydice’s father, who is already in the Underworld.
Euridice loved Father in life, but in the Underworld, she doesn’t remember this man who greets her. A lover of literature in life, she has no idea what to do with a letter, or a book.
Father, however, has somehow learned language again — which he must keep secret from those who administer the Underworld — and does what he can to help his daughter.
The language and story of it all is quite charming. We first meet Father (played with smiling charm by Brian Herndon, and signed by Spencer Stevenson) as he is writing a letter to his daughter on her wedding day. His fatherly advice includes: “Grilling a fish or toasting bread without burning requires singleness of purpose, vigilance and steadfast watching.”
In the Underworld, Eurydice expects the best, as befits the wife of Orpheus, demanding a carriage to the finest hotel. There is no hotel, but her father, to ease her transition, builds her a room of string.
In the meantime, Orpheus is desperate to get to the Underworld and save his beloved. And, the Interesting Man shows up, in his truer guise, as the Lord of The Underworld.
Erik Gandolfi is excellent in this role, with an implied smirk of knowledge in the living world, and then a nasty child’s voice at first in the Underworld. He arrives in children’s clothes, riding a tricycle, as his signing counterpart, Dane K. Lentz, speeds in on a scooter.
Orpheus uses his brilliant music to get him to the Underworld, and is given a chance to rescue his bride. Ruhl’s interpretation of the Orpheus story is in some ways more sad than other versions, but the City Lights production of it is 90 minutes of delightful performances and witnessing love and its meanings — from Orpheus and Eurydice, and Eurydice and her father.
The set, by City Lights resident scenic designer, Ron Gasparinetti, is a clever combination of forest and shoreline, with a river running through it. And the sound design by George Psarras brilliantly establishes a sense of place at all times — sometimes almost pastoral and calm, sometimes moody and scary.
‘EURYDICE’
By Sarah Ruhl, presented by City Lights Theater Company
Through: April 14
Where: City Lights Theater Company, 529 S. Second St., San Jose
Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $23-$46; 408-295-4200, cltc.org
