It may be a coincidence that two plays by Sarah Ruhl are slated to take the stage in the Bay area within a few weeks of each other, but it’s the kind of coincidence that only happens when a dramatist happens to be hot. And Ruhl – whose Eurydice appears at Stageworks on May 14 (pictured: Dahlia Legault and Dayton Sinkia star in Eurydice. Photo by Brian Becker); and whose Dead Man’s Cell Phone opens at Jobsite Theater on June 3 – is presently burning up the American theater. Her three-act Passion Play is coming to New York City, where In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) has just been nominated for a Tony. Her breakthrough comedy The Clean House was nominated for a Pulitzer and has appeared on stages nationwide, while that and her other plays have been translated into German, Polish, Korean, Russian and Spanish. Only 36 years old, Ruhl has already received a Macarthur “Genius” Grant along with a Helen Merrill award and the Whiting Writers’ Award, and has in a very few years become a critical darling. Charlies Isherwood of the Times, John Lahr of The New Yorker, and even Paul Harris of Variety have celebrated her “beguiling … hallucinatory” work that “blends the mundane and the metaphysical,” her “original and audacious voice,” her ability to “swim in the magical, sometimes menacing, and always thrilling flow of the unconscious.” Of course, hype is indigenous to the theater, but usually the critics go overboard for one play only and then start calling back their bets on the next couple of clunkers. This time they seem to be ecstatic about a (small) body of work. Which brings me to the key question: Is Sarah Ruhl as good as her reputation?
This article appears in May 5-11, 2010.
