Eurydice

Apparently classical myth and onstage bodies of water are the new big thing in Bay Area theater.

First Berkeley Rep revived its tranquil "Metamorphoses," complete with reflecting pool. Now City Lights in San Jose's "Eurydice" springs for an ever-flowing creek onstage.

Admittedly it's not the most dramatic of canals, staged at roughly the scale of a particularly ambitious miniature golf obstacle.

Nevertheless it represents an extra dose of care from director Lisa Mallette and scene designer Ron Gasparinetti, a visual announcement that "Eurydice" has ambitions bigger than one stage can contain and thus demands a certain degree of overflow.

The show is actually replete with waterworks, including an indoor rainstorm confined to an elevator and a water pump that seems to presage doom whenever anyone pours from it.

The rest of Gasparinetti's set is sprawling overgrown ruins with fascinating attention to detail; even much of the onstage greenery are real, live plants.

In old Greek stories, Eurydice is the ill-fated wife of master musician Orpheus, who dies on their wedding night and incites him to travel the underworld in a scarcely planned bid to bring her back.

This play by Sarah Ruhl devotes most of its time to Eurydice herself rather than her husband, played at City Lights by both Leah Cohen and Lauren Rhodes.

All of the parts in "Eurydice" are played by two people, since this is a dual-language production; Ruhl takes on the speaking lead, while Cohen performs the part simultaneously in American sign language.

The show splits every part between two people, one speaking and one signing. As such there's no need for a potentially distracting onstage interpreter, and the full audience is able to experience the nuances of acting through sign, which creates a style of performance all its own.

Of course, this alternative arrangement seems fraught with its own obstacles. What if the audience has trouble keeping track of so many actors at once? What if one of the performers is visibly better than the other at the same role?

Indeed, the latter case does come up almost inevitably. Ruhl plays Eurydice as seemingly naive and deferential to the people around her, whereas Cohen has additional poise and assuredness that make a stronger statement in almost every scene.

But Mallette mostly defuses these problems by making sure that the paired actors collaborate rather than compete.

One performer will often defer to the other or take cues from their counterpart, and most pairs seem plausibly like two halves of a character rather than radically differing interpretations.

Erik Gandolfi, for example, is animated and leery as a creepy villain with eyes for Eurydice, while his partner Dane K. Lentz comes off like a younger past version of the same character, affecting the detached demeanor of a budding serial killer.

The afterlife in "Eurydice" is a stolid place where dead souls get stuck in a state of inertia, forever in danger of forgetting their previous selves and just winding down.

Robert Sean Campbell and Stephanie Foisy play Orpheus as a borderline meathead, distracted and self-important. Eurydice's real counterpart is her father (played by both Brian Herndon and Spencer Stevenson), the only person in the afterlife who maintains some sense of his identity and thus is marked as a troublemaker.

Herndon played Shylock in City Light's finicky "Merchant of Venice" last year and brings the same soulful eyes and tragic humility to this show.

The problem with "Eurydice" is mostly just that the myth doesn't furnish enough material for a full-length script, and Ruhl's new additions, like the father/daughter angle, only go so far.

"Eurydice" therefore tries to power through on pure emotion. It's a play less about grieving so much as just about grief itself and the heavy, inescapable realization that eventually all things end and that nothing ever really brings them back.

That's a bold statement, and both Ruhl and Mallette show great fortitude in their willingness not to soften the blow too much.

But though often beautiful and courageously experimental, "Eurydice" does seem thin at times. Like the waters onstage, it never quite quenches the thirst it inspires.

"Eurydice" plays through April 14 at City Lights, 529 S 2nd St., San Jose. For tickets and information, call 408-295-4200 or visit City Lights website