Welcome to our review blog for Orpheus and Eurydice. Read our patron reviews, click on the Comments button to read the comments of others and post your own thoughts.

Marie Chouinard creates universes that unto themselves.   When I first saw the company perform many years ago, I was struck by the completeness of her vision, by the absolute other reality she created.   In the years when I worked with Marie as an  “interprete, ” I learned that that otherworldliness is not a façade. When I first saw Marie’s Le Sacre du Printemps, I knew that I had been challenged.   Marie’s Sacre is a masterpiece and I never grew tired of performing this work.   It changed me as her work changes anyon

Something of a sexual assault on the senses, Marie Chouinard’s Orpheus and Eurydice is a piece of primitive, gut wrenching emotion. There's a heavy emphasis on sexuality. Men and women are both naked from the waist up throughout apart from gold pasties covering their nipples, and men stalk about from time to time in platform shoes with six inch heels, evoking more from this clearly mythological performance. An explicit production with a substantial amount of on-stage copulation. And one with a single moment I'd like to isolate from the entire production.

Extraordinary performance by Compagnie Marie Chouinard doing Orpheus & Eurydice, starting from the story most people know about the poet charming his way down to the underworld to bring back his lost love and losing her when he looked back. And, what most people don't know about Eurydice and how she died, and what happened to Orpheus afterward. All this and much, much more! Revelry, lyric, adoration, insanity, terror, grief. Sexy, earthy, silly fun and some touching moments, too. Fabulous dancing, vocabulary of balletic theatrical martial artsy lyrical modern movement.

What cosmic forces are drawing artists to Orpheus and Eurydice these days? Are we all feeling pulled toward the underworld of late? Is it the economy? Whatever the reason, we're getting a lot of O & E around here, which is fine by me. I recently saw Sarah Ruhl's take on the ancient Greek myth, "Eurydice," at ACT Theatre, which was modernized in a lovely way--gorgeously staged, funny and quite moving.

Companie Marie Chouinard's 'Orpheus and Eurydice' treats it's audience to an orgiastic feast for the senses. The company performs with such visceral intensity that their movements transform into sound, or perhaps they are trying so hard to speak that their voices pull their bodies into movement. I though of Martha Graham's work while watching the company, not only because of the bound movement quality and emotional initiation of the movements, but also because the myth was used as a symbolic anchor for the evening rather than as a narrative score.

Orpheus and Eurydice played at Wesleyan a few weeks ago, and here's some of the things folks had to say about the show: "This is just to let you know how much I enjoyed Orpheus and Eurydice. Extraordinary! Difficult to categorize. Totally original. Perhaps: Aubrey Beardsley meets Euripides meets Breugel the Elder meets Antonin Artaud meets Laurel and Hardy meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest..." Michael, Middletown CT "I thought it was absolutely great. Entertaining, funny, beautiful.

Welcome to our review blog for Into the Dark Unknown. Read our patron reviews, click on the Comments button to read the comments of others and post your own thoughts.

I don’t think that the owner of the statement Holcombe Waller is  “the missing link between Jeff Buckley and George Michael ” could be more wrong and I couldn’t be happier.   I was almost driven away by that press.   1/1000 of the time there was a slight vocal inflection that might be compared to George Michael, in timbre alone.     Thank god he doesn’t sound anything like Jeff Buckley, nor is he trying to, unlike every other young male hipster, shoe gazing Jeff Buckley rip-off.   It is such a tragedy that Jeff Buckley has becom

...or an old home. This show gave me both feelings. Holcombe Waller did his theatrical-musician thing tonight at On the Boards, and even though I've been to OtB may times, and Waller and his team are only here for the weekend, I found myself feeling more like a guest in his world. I'll keep my comments about the show brief, because, well, it's one of the many you'll hear about at On the Boards that you just have to see for yourself.