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, 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. But so too did Cocteau on film, and Tolkien and Rilke in poetry. 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. 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.
More information, tickets, and other details about the production can be found via Orpheus on CultureFly, Orpheus on Eventbrite, or the production's Instagram.
WBJC listeners and Baltimore audiences may know Gavin from his nearly 20 years as dramaturg and associate artistic director at Baltimore Center Stage (in which capacity he was a frequent guest on WBJC to talk about programs and events), or from regular appearances alongside Jonathan Palevsky at the Charles Theater for Cinema Sundays discussions. A director, dramaturg, producer, translator, and adaptor who also teaches on the theater faculty at Towson University, Gavin is a recent addition to the WBJC team and delighted to play this new role.