DIALOGUES TENNESSEE ASCENDING BY BESS ROWEN
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n myth, the musician Orpheus journeys to the underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice, who has died of a snake bite on their wedding day. Orpheus plays a song for Hades, the god of the underworld, and Hades is moved enough to let Eurydice accompany him back to the world of the living. But there is one condition: Hades tells Orpheus that Eurydice will be right behind him on his journey out of hell, but that he cannot turn around to check or Eurydice will immediately vanish back to the underworld. With the end of the journey in sight, Orpheus turns, and Eurydice is lost. There have been many film and theatre adaptations of this myth—in the last decade alone, two landmark versions in Céline Sciamma’s film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) and Anaïs Mitchell’s musical Hadestown (2016). Portrait explores the idea that
Orpheus turns because Eurydice calls out to him, while Hadestown focuses on the power of retelling a story with a known ending. Over sixty years ago, Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending (1957) also challenged audiences to rethink this myth from a different perspective, centering his interest on society’s treatment of the vulnerable: in particular, single women and artistic young men. By beginning with Eurydice’s (Lady Torrance’s) plight and making Orpheus (Val Xavier) the object of desire, Williams allows Eurydice to do the looking and makes Orpheus the object of her (and our) gaze. This inversion of the original myth makes perfect sense when considered alongside Williams’ other plays, such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Rose Tattoo (1950). In the context of Williams’ body of work, we can see just how radical Orpheus Descending is in its queering of the Orpheus myth.
Pico Alexander (Valentine Xavier), Julia McDermott (Carol Cutrere). Photo by Hollis King.
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