Orpheus Descending

Orpheus – the archetype of a singer. A mythical figure who made rocks cry and trees bow before him when he sang. His voice tamed Cerberus, the hound of Hades, and calmed the rough sea. It even enchanted the gods of the Underworld into allowing his beloved Eurydice to return to the living world – as long as Orpheus did not turn back to look at her on the way out. But when he no longer heard Eurydice’s footsteps, he did exactly that – and his hesitancy was to become his undoing. Eurydice had to remain in hell, and Orpheus was ripped to pieces by Dionysus’ Maenads.

Tennessee Williams wrote his version of the Orpheus legend in the late 1950s and set it in the American South. And in the tradition of Ancient mythology, there is an unpunished crime at the heart of the family constellation which is now rearing its head and demanding its pound of flesh. Twenty years before, Jabe Torrance murdered the father of his wife, Lady. He had been the ringleader of a racist mob that set fire to the Italian man’s wine garden, killing him in the process. Now Jabe is on his deathbed, and Lady is running their dry goods store alone, while plotting her final revenge. This is Tennessee Williams’s small-town hell on earth into which his modern-day Orpheus steps: Val, a charismatic singer from New Orleans, gets a temporary job working for Lady and reignites her long-lost desires, while her husband slowly wastes away. Can she find a way back – up – to life with Val’s help? If only there were not that glance back…