From the instant the happy, bathing suit-clad couple bounded onto the seashore stage, the audience knew the young lovers were doomed. Waxing rhapsodic about their love and flirtatiously bantering about how the other should live his or her life, there was just no way the gods and goddesses of Fiction would have allowed such a pair to remain blissful. This image of brainy-but-beautiful Eurydice (Lisa Smith ’09) and musical wunderkind Orpheus (Kalan Rutstein ’11) romping about in the sand in their “From Here to Eternity” moment was iconic — the calm before the storm. Of course, if you are familiar with the classic myth about a dead wood nymph and the musician that follows her to hell, off which playwright Sarah Ruhl based her adaptation, then you already know that these 1940s-era versions of the same characters were never meant to be. Still, in Ruhl’s world, things don’t necessarily happen according to the paradigm. At the Holden Theater from Nov. 13-15, the College’s production of “Eurydice” was a heartbreaking delight.

After Eurydice agrees to marry Orpheus and their foreboding affection comes to a boil, the audience is immediately introduced to the sickly green underworld of Hades, where the dead father of the bride-to-be (Peter Lobdell ’68) survives his crippling loneliness by clinging to the memory of his favorite daughter. He writes her a letter of congratulations interspersed with Polonius-like advice and sends it upward to earth on her wedding day, where the page catches the eye of a creepy lecher (Emmanuel Genard ’11). Fascinated with the blushing bride, the deviant uses it as leverage to lure her, clad in her butter cream fluff wedding gown, to his high-rise apartment. Eager to hear from her father and naïve of the man’s intentions, Ruhl’s Eurydice follows, much in the same way her mythical namesake inadvertently becomes entangled with a lustful satyr on her own wedding day. And, of course, both pay the price for their actions. While the myth’s heroine is bitten by a snake while running from her pursuer, the play’s Eurydice falls from the apartment’s steep staircase to her death and Orpheus’ horror.

Donning a green traveling suit and carrying an empty suitcase, Eurydice soon arrives at the underworld, a cheery amnesiac with hazy memory of her husband and little emotion about her death. When her father comes to greet her, she mistakes him for a porter. He plays along, knowing she is still woozy from her journey and that reaching her will take time and effort. Worsening the situation is the chorus of stones, an odd trio of Underworld creatures who barrage Eurydice and her father with stringent rules of how to properly behave as dead folk. (A man like Eurydice’s father, who remains awash in emotion and memories of life on earth, is what they call “subversive”). Still, he does his best to ground his daughter, explaining to her that a father is a tree, and that a husband is a tree you sit under in the nude. In one touching and fascinating scene, he constructs a four-dimensional private space for her out of simple string,and she soon recovers, reveling in the time spent with her father. In the meantime, Orpheus cannot bear his heartache and inability to create after losing his muse, and devises a plan to whisk his wife back to earth.

Of course, not all goes as planned. Although the Lord of the Underworld (in a second role for Genard) grants him permission to lead her back to the surface of the earth on the condition that he not look back to make sure she is following him, it is Eurydice herself who chooses to break the terms of agreement, electing to stay with her father in the land of the dead instead of rising with her husband to serve as his inspiration in a superficial life. Tragically, however, Eurydice’s father, believing his daughter has left him forever, dips himself in the River that essentially ends his afterlife. And once again, Eurydice claims her agency by following suit instead of acquiescing to the Lord of the Underworld after he demands her hand in marriage. An unfamiliar ending to a familiar story.

No doubt, “Eurydice” was somewhat of a risky choice for the Theater and Dance department because of its relative novelty and need for innovative stagecraft, but coming off of the success of October’s “Tartuffe,” there was little question this production was bound to enchant. While much of the strength of this piece derived from the remarkable multi-storied set that served to invoke, at different times, both a humble beach town residence as well as the murky depths of the underworld, the heart of the play came from its performers. Theater veteran Smith exuded just the right balance of intellect, ethereality and strength of character in her fresh Eurydice, while burst-of-energy co-star Rutstein oozed with restless creativity and sensuality. His simian-like acrobatics throughout the play brought vigor to an Orpheus that could have been a drip, and there were several times I feared for his safety as he jumped, hung and swung from great heights in his yearning for his wife.

The Theater and Dance department’s Senior Resident Artist Lobdell was a gentle father to Eurydice, and Genard played the Disturbing Freak well as both of Eurydice’s pursuers (Michael Jackson coming to mind at least once). Last, but not least, like a triplet set of shrill Chesire Cats, the comic relief chorus of stones were easily the most watchable actors of the entire piece. Played by untamable force Tierra Allen ’09, charmingly weird Eric Swartz ’11 and a dominatrix-like Emmy Pierce ’11, the stones brought the funny in the most sinister manner possible.

Overall, Ruhl’s meditation on the unstoppable love between a father and a daughter and the difficulties of sustaining romantic love was a triumph for the College.