Reading the work of Sarah Ruhl is, as reviewers before me have endeavored to point out, much like falling in love. It is, at times, highly surreal and gripping in a way that escapes logical reason. Her plays retain the air of the modern, but there is a very old, familiar quality lurking just at the peripheral edges of written consciousness.
Her plays are penned in the manner of transcribed dreams; filled with shifting imagery and and skewed perspectives that hit right at the heart, yet still contain an air of the delightfully absurd.
Take, for instance, her updated tale of love, "Eurydice".
"Eurydice" is a refreshed version of the ancient greek Orpheus myth, telling the story of a dreamy, absorbed musician the literary-minded wife as they span the breadth between the worlds. We are clearly reading the tale of two adults, yet they are characterized with an almost childishly overzealous approach to love, forgetfulness, life and death. Emotions range from startlingly neutral to forcefully passionate in an instant, keeping the audience swept up in her tempestuous story-telling from start to finish while hardly taking a breath.
Sarah Ruhl manages to be in the vanguard without being preachy. She manages modern surrealism without losing touch with her audience, keeping everything carefully bound together with a tender red-thread of a true artist. Throughout every literary journey, she takes you gleefully by the hand and drags you down her own personal rabbit hole (for truly, her work does have a certain delightfully obscure Lewis Carroll feel to it). This particular book is a marvelous anthology of her plays (although I DO wish it could have included Dead Man's Cell Phone).Get more detail about The Clean House and Other Plays.
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