December 4th, 2009
 

Orpehus X

“The lines between this world and the next, reality and fantasy, and music theater and art installation are all often hypnotically blurred in Rinde Eckert’s intoxicating Orpheus X”

……..

“Director Robert Woodruff’s taut and immaculately conceived production unfolds with almost dreamlike fluidity on a large raised platform that’s flanked on one side by a Plexiglass wall and on another by a video screen that hangs just above the action (scenic design is by David Zinn and Denise Marika). Early in the production, when Eurydice seems to be first entering Hades, she scrawls Greek letters on the glass wall and it’s a marvelous visual metaphor for the ephemeral disconnect between the worlds of the living and the dead. “

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“Throughout the piece, the screen is used for Marika’s often surreal and jagged videos which show a woman undressing and wandering through a labyrinth. While these elements help bring the next world to life beautifully, two huge girders — one rising perpendicularly from the stage and one that horizontally extends just above the playing area — are reminders of the realities of the world of the living.”