Review: ORPHEUS DESCENDING at Oakland Theater Project

ORPHEUS DESCENDING remains painfully relevant. Tennessee Williams’ southern gothic play intertwines wisps of Greek myth with the racist Mississippi of the Jim Crow era. The lines are drawn, the expectations are set, but some people will choose their own lot rather than what’s handed to them. Desire, morality, and society’s expectations fuel a fire that leads the story to its inevitable end.

ORPHEUS DESCENDING is set in a small town store in Mississippi. The owner’s wife, Lady Torrance, is marked with grief from her past. Still she welcomes Val, a newcomer in a snakeskin jacket and clutching a guitar. She offers him a job as a clerk. Val’s mysterious past comes into question when local girl Carol Cutrere insists that she knows him from New Orleans. Beulah Binnings and Dolly Hamma are town gossips, hanging around the store always with something to say filling the role of the Greek Chorus. Vee Talbot is the sheriff’s wife. She is also a painter and blessed and cursed with visions. Together this group is like kindling for a fire, and Val’s arrival is the spark that sets the blaze. Jabe Torrance, the store owner, is shifty, suspicious, and trouble. And big things, and terrible things can happen in a small town.

It is unclear if Val is running from or running to something, but he’s definitely on the run. And Hunter Bryant gives Val a languid sense of movement and constantly scanning the surroundings. His presence is one that fills all the available space, but like water, without effort. His radiating charm is impossible to ignore. Lizzy Izyumin delivers some excellent one-liners as the Nurse as well as jabs with her verbal sparring partner, Zolboo Namkhaidorj who plays Dolly. Jabe Torrance, Sheriff Talbott, and David Cutrere are three unlikeable characters, and Robert Parsons gives you distinct reasons to dislike each of them. Despite their unifying unlikeablility, Parsons defines them individually with marked physicality. Susannah Martin as Vee Talbott leans into the mystical and seems to inhabit two worlds simultaneously. Natalie Pasquinelli’s Carol Cutrere is both flash and substance. She is both disarming and lovely. Lisa Ramirez as Lady Torrance reveals the mix and counterintuitive natures that can live within one person. She is anxious and sad, but still dreams and has hope. She is constantly in motion, showing her need for control in an uncontrollable situation. She is scared and strong, and Ramirez refuses to let her be easy to define.

Oakland Theater Project lets the text do the heavy lifting in this production. Sam Fehr’s set design alludes to the store rather than recreating the space. The props by Heidi Button fill in the necessary bits without making it clunky. Direction by Will Detlefsen provides natural movement and is not heavy-handed. He blends the mystical and real into a world that we know but don’t always understand. The myth flows quietly underneath the show more as a gentle guide rather than a narrative force. I had hoped that Val’s brief moments with the guitar and vocals would provide a stronger connection to Orpheus as well as add an ethereal element, but they felt like passing moments of little notice. 

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