No looking back for ORPHEUS at Mobtown Ballroom
With the start of a new year comes a new flurry of activity in the local theater scene, here in Baltimore as elsewhere. Amid that flurry–and maybe appropriately for this month of Janus, that twin-faced deity–Charm City Filmmakers will present a new, “grittier” retelling of one of music’s favorite myths, encouraging us not to look back. Saturday and Sunday, January 24th and 25th, Mobtown Ballroom plays host to a brand new musical, Orpheus by Dumpster Fire. It was written by Benjamin Cuchulainn Kaspar with an original rock-infused score (by Nate Daly, Liminal Pines, and Josef Scott), produced by Charm City Filmmakers, and directed by Anthony Ross Ocampo.
For what might be obvious reasons, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice–the iconic instrumentalist and his beautiful beloved, united by a love stronger than death but doomed by his simple lack of trust–has fascinated musical and theatrical creators for millennia.
Among countless iterations of this tragic tale in many forms and languages over many centuries, it has understandably been catnip for musical versions: Gluck famously revisited it in opera, as did everyone from Monteverdi and Haydn to Offenbach (thank you, Can-Can). But so too did Cocteau on film, and Tolkien and Rilke in poetry–following in the classical footsteps of Virgil and Ovid (providing Mary Zimmerman with material for her watery reimagining in Metamorphoses). Black Orpheus shifted the story to Brazil; Rushdie made it post-colonial and magic-realist.
More recently, Margaret Atwood and then Sarah Ruhl turned the story around from Eurydice’s perspective (with Ruhl’s also making its way to the opera stage). We’ve seen the story spun and respun, reversed and inverted, rocked, queered, and more. Hadestown has taken us to the underworld by way of Broadway, where it’s played alongside another cinematic and musical riff on the original, Baz Lerman’s Moulin Rouge.
What, then, can we look forward to from this latest version, which further reinvents the familiar foundation in a brand new frame? Well, you can hear what director Anthony Ross Ocampo had to say about that–and much else–here:
More information, tickets, other details about the production can be found here: Orpheus on CultureFly
or here: Orpheus on Eventbrite
Or, follow along on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/obdf_play/
