UKIAH, Calif. – The Mendocino College Theatre Arts Department will present “Eurydice,” Sarah Ruhl’s magical and beautiful adaptation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The play will run Nov. 7 to 16 in Mendocino College’s Center Theatre on the Ukiah Campus.

According to director Reid Edelman, “Ruhl has put her own highly imaginative spin on the classic myth drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an ancient story which has lent itself to innumerable retellings. This is an enchanting play which will touch people’s hearts.”

Orpheus and Eurydice is the myth in which on the wedding day of the beautiful Eurydice, to the musician Orpheus, tragedy strikes.

Eurydice steps onto a pit of vipers, dies and is swept away to the underworld of Hades.

Orpheus’ grief overwhelms him; he travels to the underworld and plays music which melts the lord of the underworld’s heart.

Hades agrees that Orpheus can lead Eurydice back to the world of the living, but with one condition: Orpheus must promise not to look back at Eurydice until they reach the surface.

Orpheus, undone by his own doubts, looks back, losing his love forever.

The myth has been interpreted widely by poets, playwrights, psychologists, philosophers, musicians and filmmakers through the generations.

In the version of the story in production at Mendocino College, playwright Sarah Ruhl adds the character of Eurydice’s dead father (played by Jonathan Whipple), whom Eurydice (played by theater major Melany Katz) meets when she goes to the underworld.

“The play examines the nature of love, memory, and earthly connectedness,” said Edelman. “Ruhl wrote the play as a sort of love letter to her own deceased father, and it is brimming with humanity. The play celebrates the power of both poetry and music in connecting us to others. It is one of the most affecting plays that I have ever encountered.”

In this production, the musician Orpheus (played by Max Hovland) is a moody modern guitarist, and the Lord of The Underworld (played by DonMike Chilberg) is a child who grows and shrinks in the spirit of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

Ruhl also adds the haunting character of the “Nasty Interesting Man” (played by theater major Thomas Kenney) and a “chorus of stones,” actors and dancers who comment on the action and torment Eurydice in the underworld.

The Stone Chorus features Scott Andrews, James Blake, Melissa Chapman, Ayla Decaire, Thomas Kenney, Marco Orozco, Maheanani Phillips and Megan Regan.

An evocative musical score by college recording arts instructor Rodney Grisanti and students in his Recording Arts classes will enhance the production.

There also will be original dance sequences choreographed by college dance instructor Eryn Schon-Brunner.

This play is appropriate for most audiences, though its themes of love, death, memory, language and music will be most appreciated by those ages 12 and older.

The production features a cast of 12 local performers, as well as impressive scenery and costumes created by students in Mendocino College’s theater, art and costuming classes under the direction of faculty members Kathy Dingman Katz, Gregory Byard, Lisa Rosenstreich and Theatre Technician Larry L. Lang.

Several members of the production are students in the college’s new Conservatory Cohort Group, a learning community of students engaging in a pre-professional conservatory-style training experience.

The play is being stage managed by Charlyn Keyser with the assistance of Alice Gully and Sarah Davis.

Eurydice opens on Friday, Nov. 7. Performances will run for two weekends only, through Nov. 16.

Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7, and Saturday, Nov. 8; 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13; 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, and Saturday, Nov. 15; and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16.

Tickets – $20 general, $15 students and seniors – are available at the Mendocino Book Co., at Mendocino College Bookstore and online at www.ArtsMendocino.org .

The performance on Thursday, Nov. 13, is a special discount night, with all tickets costing only $10.

Audiences are encouraged to purchase tickets in advance.

For more information, call 707-468-3172 or visit www.mendocino.edu/CVPA .

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Main Street Gallery invites you to join other art lovers to an exciting First Friday Fling reception on Nov. 7 from 5:30 to to 7 p.m.

The gallery will feature new work from three artists this month.

Patti Kubran will present her impressions of Lake County landscapes in photography. Carmen Brittain will offer a new show of humor in acrylics, while Richard Seisser, best known for his work in pastels, will present a full body of work in acrylics.

Continuing in the November show is the winner of the Kelseyville Pear Festival Poster Contest, Ruth Morgan, showing her whimsical three-dimensional and wall art and Richard Schmidt will display his wonderfully executed paintings of cowpokes framed in handcrafted barn wood along with landscapes.

Debbie Jorgenson delights the eye with her delicate work in pastels, while Marcie Long’s art provides a counterpoint in her large and colorful paintings in oil.

Also continuing in the October show are Judy Cardinale with beautifully executed landscapes and “critters,” Stephen Rotter with work in pastels, photography and sculpture, and Susan Johnson with paintings in pastels and watercolor.

Rounding out the show are the fine drawings and photography of Peter Shandera and the large abstract work of Shelby Posada in mixed media.

“Winter in Lake County” is November’s theme show in the Linda Carpenter Student Gallery.

Also on display will be a few pieces of art from the estates of Samuil Marcu, Jerome Seitz and Gerald Thompson to entice you to the upcoming auction to be held at the Soper Reese Theatre on Sunday, Nov. 16.

Meet the artists and enjoy the fine flavors of the wines from the Rosa d’ Oro Vineyards while enjoying the creative sounds of the talented Travis Rinker on guitar. 

The Main Street Gallery is located at 325 N. Main St. in Lakeport. 

For more information, call the gallery at 707-263-6658.

JOHN WICK (Rated R)

With stringy long hair and scruffy beard, a lithe and fit Keanu Reeves, nattily dressed in dark suits, looks and acts impressively the part of a ruthless hit man, skilled in dozens of ways of killing and completely without remorse as the titular character in “John Wick.”

As the film opens, there is no indication that John Wick is, in fact, an extremely hard-edged professional assassin who once performed contract killings for Russian mobsters. Five years ago, Wick retired from the business when he found true love.

But for now, he’s mourning the loss of his beloved wife Helen (Bridget Moynahan) to cancer, seen in flashbacks to her dying days in the hospital and to happier times at the beach captured on his cell phone.

Stopping at the local gas station in rural New Jersey, Wick is approached by a few menacing characters who admire his classic 1969 Ford Mustang, with one of them offering to buy the vehicle, an offer that Wick refuses and goes about his business, but not before exchanging a few choice words in Russian to one of the thugs.

Helen’s last gift to Wick, which arrives after her funeral on a bleak rainy day, is a beagle puppy named Daisy that plays an essential role as a lovable companion for the retired assassin, who is oddly enough portrayed as a somewhat empathetic character.

At home, late one night, Wick is ambushed by the Russian thug Iosef (Alfie Allen), with the help of his crew, to steal the Mustang that Wick refused to sell. In the process, Wick is seriously beaten and Daisy is killed, an act so vicious that he is stirred to revenge.

What happens going forward is fairly predictable, but the action is realized with such intensity and originality that “John Wick” is far more brutal and compelling than films of a similar nature, such as the memorable “Death Wish.”

Wick discovers rather quickly that Iosef is not just a garden-variety sociopath, but the son of Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist), the Russian mob leader for whom Wick once performed contract killings.

That Viggo Tarasov is, in fact, also a vicious sociopath who has mercilessly eliminated his competition to unite warring crime clans under his own umbrella shows that the Iosef did not fall far from the proverbial tree.

However, the petulant, spoiled and unhinged Iosef lacks his father’s instincts to act more rationally and with cautious deliberation.

The senior Tarasov is immediately aware that the beast has been awakened and that big trouble is coming his way.

It doesn’t take much for Wick to return to his old form. Remnants of his past life were buried under cement in his garage. Swinging a sledgehammer, Wick unearths a cache of arms and gold coins that are used as currency in his mysterious underworld.

The hub of the New York underworld is the Continental Hotel, a very stylish establishment that caters only to high-end bad guys. The upscale hotel is a safe house for assassins, where the stern house rule is that murder and other forms of mayhem are forbidden on the property.

Ian McShane has a nice turn as Winston, the hotel proprietor who strictly enforces the rules. The trouble is that Viggo Tarasov has offered a $2 million bounty for the killing of John Wick, an offer that appeals to some of the assassin’s old pals, such as the lethal and beautiful Ms. Perkins (Adrienne Palicki), who just happen to hang out at the Continental.

Reconnecting with old contacts, Wick follows leads that could take him to Iosef. As a result, one of his first stops is the Red Circle, a Russian nightclub where Wick ends up gunning down most of the security staff as he gets very close to his elusive prey.

The nightclub shootout is just the first of many explosive encounters that put Wick closer to his target and eventually to the inevitable showdown with the top Russian mobster.

Violent confrontations occur in parking lots, a church where the corrupt priest hides the mob’s assets, and a Brooklyn warehouse.

“John Wick” benefits from pivotal yet brief roles by accomplished actors such as Willem Dafoe’s Marcus, a crack sniper and former colleague of Wick, who is offered the bounty, and John Leguizamo’s Aurelio, the owner of a chop-shop who warns Iosef of the mistake he made in stealing the Ford Mustang.

Operating from a lean script, Keanu Reeves’s John Wick is a stoic character given to few words, but his message is delivered forcefully by brutal violence.

“John Wick” is a great vehicle for Reeves’ natural style and arguably his best film since action pictures “Speed” and “The Matrix.”

“John Wick,” the high-octane action film, is also lean in its running time, delivering an exciting revenge thriller in an economical yet forceful manner.

Indeed, the brutal violence and killings are off the charts, but “John Wick” is compelling pulp fiction.  

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – A collection of more than 40 oil paintings from the estates of three well known Lake County artists will go up on the auction block at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16, at the Soper Reese Theatre. 

Interested parties may preview the works beginning at noon.

The auction features the work of Jerome M. Seitz, Gerald Thompson and Samuil Marcu. 

Proceeds from the auction will benefit the Lake County Arts Council.

Seitz was well traveled and spent extensive time in North Africa, the Middle East and much of Europe.

His experiences are evident in his impressionistic paintings reminiscent of Monet, Manet and Pissarro. It is as if his hand moves over the canvas automatically, filling the space with brilliance of color and balance of composition that only the best scenic artist can portray.

Thompson painted more than 100 portraits in categories ranging from actors and actresses, famous and historical figures, American Indians to animal life. 

A few of these paintings and an album of his body of work is currently on view at the Main Street Gallery in Lakeport.  

At the auction, buyers may select their desired painting from the album which can then be picked up at the gallery.

While Marcu spent some of his later years in Lake County, he lived a great part of his life in the Los Angeles area and frequented Venice Beach.

Many of his paintings are reflective of the beach life depicting people sunning on the sand. 

Much of his work shows an Impressionist influence as well as his ability to simplify the human form while imparting a sense of space and emotion.

For more information on the artists, please contact Shelby Posada, executive director, Lake County Arts Council, at 707-263-1871.

For more information on the event, contact the Soper Reese Theatre Box Office, 275 S. Main St., Lakeport, 707-263-0577, www.soperreesetheatre.com .

Many poets have attempted to describe the way in which flocks of birds fly, as if they were steered by a single consciousness.

In the following poem, David Allan Evans gives us a new metaphor for the way light shows through the flying birds.

Evans is Poet Laureate of South Dakota.

Sixty Years Later I Notice, Inside A Flock Of Blackbirds,

the Venetian blinds
I dusted off

for my mother on
Saturday mornings,

closing, opening them
with the pull cord a few

times just to watch the outside
universe keep blinking,

as the flock suddenly
rises from November stubble,

hovers a few seconds,
closing, opening,

blinking, before it tilts,
then vanishes over a hill.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2013 by David Allan Evans from his most recent book of poems, the Carnival, the Life, Settlement House, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of David Allan Evans and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

I love a good ghost story, and here’s one about a ghost cat, by John Philip Johnson, who lives in Nebraska, where most ghosts live in the wind and are heard in the upper branches of cedar trees in country cemeteries.

He has an illustrated book of poems, “Stairs Appear in a Hole Outside of Town.”

Bones and Shadows

She kept its bones in a glass case
next to the recliner in the living room,
and sometimes thought she heard
him mewing, like a faint background music;
but if she stopped to listen, it disappeared.
Likewise with a nuzzling around her calves,
she’d reach absent-mindedly to scratch him,
but her fingers found nothing but air.

One day, in the corner of her eye,
slinking by the sofa, there was a shadow.
She glanced over, expecting it to vanish.
But this time it remained.
She looked at it full on. She watched it move.
Low and angular, not quite as catlike
as one might suppose, but still, it was him.

She walked to the door, just like in the old days,
and opened it, and met a whoosh of winter air.
She waited. The bones in the glass case rattled.
Then the cat-shadow darted at her,
through her legs, and slipped outside.
It mingled with the shadows of bare branches,
and leapt at the shadow of a bird.
She looked at the tree, but there was no bird.
Then he blended into the shadow of a bush.
She stood in the threshold, her hands on the door,
the sharp breeze ruffling the faded flowers
of her house dress, and she could feel
her own bones rattling in her body,
her own shadow trying to slip out.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2013 by John Philip Johnson and reprinted by permission of John Philip Johnson. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.