It’s more fun in the Underworld
The story of the devotion of Orpheus receives new treatment and that great actress Tamsin Greig beguiles in Pinter
THE myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has had a good run for its money. It’s inspired operas by Monteverdi, Gluck and Offenbach, a play by Jean Anouilh and a film by Jean Cocteau. Now, it’s back on stage at the National Theatre in a lively folk-opera, Hadestown, with book, music and lyrics by Anaïs Mitchell, that’s had a long gestation. It started out in 2006 as a homespun concert, then became a concept album and an off-broadway show. Expanded to fit the Olivier stage, this version will eventually head back to New York.
That’s quite some journey —almost as taxing as that undertaken by Orpheus to the Underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice. The big question is what exactly Miss Mitchell adds to the classical myth. Most obviously, she gives the story a strong economic twist. It’s hunger that tempts Eurydice to desert the penniless poet-musician and seek sustenance underground. Hades, the snazzy-suited King of the Underworld, presides over a neon necropolis where, as he sings: ‘I fashioned things of steel. Oil drums and automobiles.’
The only problem is that his kingdom depends on slave labour and Orpheus has what you might call a hell of a job trying to save Eurydice from a life of bondage.
To be honest, I was never totally sure what the show was saying. With its mixture of Depression-era poverty and climate-change chaos, it seems to be yearning for a purer, cleaner, pre-industrialised world. However, the conclusion suggests we can overturn the ancient myths as well as re-enact them.
Whatever her point, Miss Mitchell writes terrific songs that are a pleasure to listen to. Way Down Hadestown, that gives the journey to the nether regions a railroad rhythm, has strong echoes of New Orleans jazz. There’s even a number—that’s acquired chilling resonance today—in which Hades explains why he’s built a wall to keep out poverty and protect freedom.
Rachel Chavkin’s production also contains an astonishing performance by Patrick Page as Hades. I learn from the
Orpheus has what you might call a hell of a job trying to save Eurydice from a life of bondage
It’s Tamsin Greig’s ability to portray two different forms of isolation that I shall long remember
programme that Mr Page has played Macbeth and Coriolanus in Washington DC and he brings to the Underworld King an economy of gesture that’s the hallmark of theatrical style and a rich bass voice that seems to issue from the depths of his being.
He’s so mesmerising that he makes Reeve Carney’s gentle, fluting Orpheus seem rather pallid in comparison. However, the women’s roles are well taken with Eva Noblezada making Eurydice a woman touchingly torn between the food of love and the need for a square meal and Amber Gray is a vivacious Persephone.
Even if the message isn’t always clear, the show offers an exuberant, tuneful variation on an old tale.
Although it has only a short time left to run, I would also recommend the latest instalment in the six-month season of Harold Pinter’s one-act plays at the London theatre named after him. Just as Mr Page dominates Hadestown, one particular performer also left me quietly astonished.
Tamsin Greig has long been admired for her comic prowess, but, in two of Pinter’s shorter pieces, Landscape and A Kind of Alaska, she reveals an emotional depth I haven’t seen before.
In Landscape, Miss Greig plays Beth, who dwells on a memory of past passion that cuts her off from her crude, intemperately abusive husband (an excellent Keith Allen). She’s even more remarkable in A Kind of Alaska, based on an Oliver Sacks case study, as the character of Deborah returning to consciousness after a 29-year sleep. Miss Greig has the silvery register of a young girl, the stumbling movement of a bedbound woman rediscovering the use of her limbs and the apprehension that comes with awakening to a new world.
There are many other good things, such as Lee Evans’s beguiling eccentricity in a series of Pinter sketches, but it’s Miss Greig’s ability to portray two different forms of isolation that I shall long remember.
Another recommendation is Switzerland by Joanna Murray- Smith, which I saw at the Ustinov Studio in Bath in the summer; it’s moved into the Ambassadors, WC2, and is well worth a look. The play is a taut, metaphysical thriller in which the famous crime novelist Patricia Highsmith is visited in her Swiss hideaway by a youthful emissary from her publisher, who craves another of her Ripley novels.
Nothing, of course, is quite what it seems and the play turns into a cat-and-mouse game with occasional echoes of Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth. Phyllis Logan skilfully reminds us that Miss Highsmith, for all her fame, was a bilious solitary and Calum Finlay invests her visitor with a mixture of youthful gaucherie and eerie calm. Whatever tenterhooks are, it’s a play that keeps you pleasantly on them. ‘Hadestown’ until January 26, 2019 (020–7452 3000); ‘Pinter Three’ until December 8 (0844 871 7622); ‘Switzerland’ until January 5, 2019 (020–7395 5405)