October 23 Openings, Part Three: WATER BY THE SPOONFUL at ISU

We have a multitude of entertainment options this week, with three good ones opening tonight. We've talked about ShakesFEAR!, a haunted house concept played around Ewing Manor and its grounds, and The Shape of Things, a provocative play by Neil LaBute that takes the stage at Illinois Wesleyan University through the weekend.

The third choice, Water by the Spoonful, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, has a bit longer run than the other two. You can catch Water by the Spoonful at Westhoff Theatre tonight through November 1, with evening performances at 7:30 pm and matinees on the 26th and the 1st at 2 pm.

Water by the Spoonful is the second in a trilogy of plays by Hudes, all dealing with a veteran of the Iraq wars named Elliot. In the first play, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, itself a Pulitzer finalist, the title character was dealing with a family legacy of war and its echoes. In Water, family is also at the forefront, although this time it's Elliot and his cousin Yaz, as well as an online community of recovering addicts that begins to function like a family. The Happiest Song Plays Last, which premiered last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, brings back Elliot and Yaz as they struggle to find "peace and purpose in an ever-changing world."

The play takes place in North Philadelphia, where Ellot is trying to get back into civilian life while staying away from a dangerous addiction and some very bad dreams. He has a job -- at a Subway Sandwich -- and connections, to his cousin, Yaz, and the woman who raised him, who is dying. Addiction is also an issue for a small group of diverse online "friends" who gather every day to help each other stay sober. The connection between Elliot and the cyber-support group become clearer as the play progresses, delineating families and friendships bound and separated by blood and water.

Third-year MFA directing candidate Leah Cassella directs Water by the Spoonful for Illinois State University's Westhoff Theatre with a cast that includes grad student Ronald Roman as Elliot and Lauren Pfeiffer as Yaz. Jaimie Taylor will play Odessa, the leader of the addiction support group, with Joey Banks, Anastasia Ferguson and Hananiah Wiggins as the other members of her online family and Eddie Curley as someone from Elliot's past who haunts him.

Tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for faculty, staff, students or seniors. Tickets can be purchased at the College of Fine Arts Box Office, located in ISU's Center for the Performing Arts, from 11 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday, or by phone at 309-438-2535. For more information, click here or here.

FOREVER WALTZ and the Fascination with Orpheus and Eurydice

The Forever Waltz, the Glyn Maxwell play directed by Leah Cassella that opened last week in ISU's Centennial West 207, is inspired by a Greek myth. Note that it is inspired by, and not a direct retelling of, the classic story of Orpheus and Eurydice. In the myth, Orpheus is a wonderfully talented musician, so skilled that his music enchanted gods, people and animals alike. He loves a woman named Eurydice, but she dies on their wedding day. Because of the beauty of the songs he creates after her death, Orpheus is allowed to travel to the Underworld to get her back. He can bring Eurydice back to the world of the living only if he walks ahead of her all the way and does not turn back to see her. He must trust that she is there, following him, and never look back, or she will return to Hades forever.

Of course, he looks back at the last moment and loses his Eurydice forever.

There is something about that myth that has inspired all sorts of artists, and it's intriguing to look at the different paths their work takes. "Sir Orfeo," a Middle English poem from around the 13th century, mixes Orpheus with Celtic folklore and fairy stories, while Christoph Willibald Gluck's 18th century opera Orfeo ed Euridice starts after she's dead and then offers a happy ending with another chance at life for "Euridice," as she's spelled for Gluck.

Composer Harrison Birtwistle has continued to come back to Orpheus and Eurydice in his work, with The Mask of Orpheus, a free-form opera with alternate plot lines first staged in 1986, The Second Mrs. Kong in 1994, adding King Kong and Vermeer to the mythological mix, and The Corridor, all about the fateful journey back from the Underworld, in 2009.

The most famous modern take on the story may be Marcel Camus' 1959 film Black Orpheus, based on the Brazilian play Orfeu da Conceição by Vinicius de Moraes. Orpheus is now Orfeu, a trolley driver who meets a beautiful passenger during Carnaval in Rio, with the tragic love story played to a samba beat.

There's also a sonnet sequence by Rainer Maria Rilke, an album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds called Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman, Roberta Gellis's romance novel Enchanted Fire that turns Eurydice into a sorceress; Salmon Rushdie's alt-reality novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, about the romance and careers of pop stars Vina and Ormus, and a rock opera simply called Orpheus and Eurydice by Russian composer Alexander Zhurbin.

And then there are the stage versions... Jean Anouilh wrote his Eurydice during World War II, and that wartime cynicism combined with dark fantasy and sexual overtones gives the story a different flavor; Tennessee Williams turns Orpheus into a wild young man named Val who plays guitar and wreaks havoc in a Southern dry goods store in Orpheus Descending; Naomi Iizuka includes the myth in Polaroid Stories, her 1997 version of Ovid's Metamorphoses transmogrified into an urban landscape of street kids, violence and drugs, with Orpheus as an abusive boyfriend who threatens to go to hell and back to keep Eurydice by his side; Mary Zimmerman uses it as one of the stories in her own 2002 Metamorphoses, focusing on the instant Orpheus turns back, repeating it again and again as one heartrending, beautifully choreographed moment in time; and Sarah Ruhl focuses on Eurydice and what she feels and wants, showing her time in the Underworld, where she has found her father and may just want to stay in her 2003 play simply called Eurydice.

Why is this myth catnip for composers, authors, filmmakers and playwrights? For some, it's about the cracks in the romantic ideal, the idea that deathless love may be foiled by death after all. For others, it's about the depths of passion, trust and betrayal that accompany love. Or maybe it's simply the ambiguity in the Greek myth, as different artists ponder the masculine and the feminine and the power dynamics of love and sex in different places among different classes and societies.

To see Glyn Maxwell's own unique version of Orpheus and Eurydice, you can find The Forever Waltz at CW 207 this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, with a 2 pm matinee on Saturday the 12th. For ISU, actors Martin Hanna and Lizzy Haberstroh appear as Mobile and Evie, accompanied by a mysterious guitar-playing guide called Watts, played by Eddie Curley. For tickets, click here for Ticketmaster, or call 309-438-2535 between 11 am and 5 pm Monday through Friday or one hour before performances to reach the ISU CPA box office.

Lanford Wilson's HOME FREE! Opens at ISU Tomorrow

Lanford Wilson is a playwright who fascinates me. I love Talley's Folly, the play that won him a Pulitzer Prize. I also quite enjoy Fifth of July, which has characters connected to Talley's Folly but a slightly different tone. The Rimers of Eldritch is wonderful. And has a different tone from anything so far. Hot L Baltimore is fine, if not a favorite, but once again, whole different tone. I haven't seen Balm in Gilead, although I've heard great things. And then there's Burn This, which I am not a fan of at all. If nobody had attached Lanford Wilson's name to Burn This, I would've sworn it belonged to a different playwright.

But there are similarities swirling around in all of Wilson's plays, about freedom and lack of it, about what it is to be an outsider, about trying to find someone who will understand, and about the fragmentation, the desperation and the poetry in everyday life. In some ways, he is the quintessential Off-Off-Broadway playwright, associated with the emergence of Caffe Cino and La MaMa, even though he made it past Off-Off to Off and then On Broadway with great success.

And all of that serves as an introduction of sorts to Home Free!, one of Wilson's first plays, a one-act about a brother and sister -- at least we think they're brother and sister -- named Lawrence and Joanna. They live together in a place that looks more like a playroom than a house, and they are surrounded by toys and games. The kicker here is that Lawrence won't leave. Ever. And they have imaginary friends. At least we think they're imaginary. We also think that Joanna may be pregnant with Lawrence's baby, and that his inability to leave their playhouse may result in her death. Unless she's not really having a baby. The big question here is whether either can make it out of their little nest alive, or whether they are only free when they are safe at home.

Leah Cassella, one of the first-year MFA directing candidates at Illinois State University, is at the helm of the production of Home Free! that opens tomorrow, November 1, in Centennial East 115 on the ISU campus, with actors Patrick Riley and Claire Ford portraying Lawrence and Joanna.

This production is offered free of charge, with performances scheduled at 5:30 pm on November 1, 2, 3 and 4. Since it's free and only 35 minutes long, it's a good chance to see a piece of Lanford Wilson's early work and maybe, just maybe, get a better handle on this unpredictable, deeply interesting playwright.