EURYDICE, by Jean Anouilh

CAST:

Orfee.......................Keith Stevens
Eurydice....................Sara Kaminski
M. Henri...................Gregory Willey
The Father.............Randolph Courtland
Actress.................Heather McCormack
The Mother..................Shelly Gracon
The Girl........................Mary Bell
Dulac.......................David Samuels
Actress........................Maria Sosa
Vincent...................Keith Kornajcik
The Station Waiter...........Leonard Goff
Mathias...................Marty Seeholzer
The Hotel Waiter............Michael Smith
The Manager.....................Doug Fill

Production Design.............Eugene Hare
Assistants to the Director/
Stage Managers...............Edward Walsh
.............................Josh Padgett
Technical Director............................................David Lantz
Lighting Design..........................................Laura M. Harasyn
Sound Design................................................Michael Smith
Costume Shop Supervisor....................................Charlotte Hare
Wig Master................................................Randy Courtland

DIRECTOR'S NOTE

Jean Anouilh is one of the dominant French playwrights of the Twentieth Century. His plays and screenplays have reached millions of audience members and are frequently revived to this day. English speaking audiences are perhaps most familiar with The Lark which featured a young Julie Harris on Broadway (and which was seen here at the Factory a few years ago) and Antigone, most recently seen in Cleveland at the Play House a few seasons ago. Eurydice, which I regard as one of his best plays, is for some unknowable reason rarely performed. It may be that the title is obscure or off-putting. The British preferred to call the play Point of Departure,and the Americans called it Legend of Lovers on Broadway, neither of which seem much of an improvement over the simple Eurydice.

This play is referred to by critical students of Anouilh's work as one of his nouvelles piece noires. Written in 1941 and under the Nazi occupation of Paris, this play marked Anouilh's return to the pessimism that characterized his early workl But it was, as the label suggests, a "new" pessimism, and a more profound. For Anouilh here is deeply pessimistic about Life, but paradoxically deeply optimistic about Love and its power to transform existence.

The form of the play is brilliantly suited to its themes of Love, Death and Art in Time. Dabblers in "Orphism" often see a triangle in the philosophies suggested by the Orpheus legend, a tiangle with Love, Death and Art at the three corners. These Orphic thinkers perceive that each of the corners assumes the apex at different points in the story, something which Anouilh, consciously or unconsciously follows in this play. With Art as one cornerstone, it is hardly surprising that Anouilh would use various theatrical forms or styles to fashion his play. Hence you'll see elements of Theatricalism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and even a touch of bio-mechanics in the evershifting, but consistently poetic style of the play. The "Art of the Theatre" as a total art (as opposed to a composite art) is the hallmark of this composition.

Time in which the story unfolds is anything but simply linear or merely cyclical in this play. It is an ever-present aspect of the cosmos. As M. Henri says quite matter-of-factly at one point, "It's still yesterday." It is the mark of Anouilh's genius that this remark doesn't seem incredible or ridiculous, bur rather a logical extension of the world of the play. A world in whicyh it is oppressively hot for certain people and "bitterly cold" for others. A world in which paradox is the nature of things. In short a world of surpassing reality.

In the brief time you spend with this play, I hope you'll enter with us into the world of this play. You'll find its words staying with you and returning for a much longer time than the play itself requires.
_______________________________________Wayne S. Turney, December 4, 1998