Eurydice ** TNT

Initially beguiling, American playwright Sarah Ruhl’s updating of the Greek myth of Orpheus in the underworld loses focus early on and fails to live up to the likeable charm displayed in its opening scene.

In source versions, the emphasis is on Orpheus, the poet and musician who is given a single chance to descend into Hades and reclaim the bride he lost on their wedding day.

Ruhl, however, focuses more on Eurydice, creating a dead father (Geff Francis) who writes to her from beyond the grave. Bijan Sheibani’s playful production first has the young lovers frolicking, in goggles and swimwear, at the edge of the sea. A proposal and a wedding party swiftly follow, but with the lure of a letter from her father, a “Nasty Interesting Man” entices Eurydice to his high rise apartment and a sudden fall to her death.

With a chorus of disapproving Stones (Big, Little and Loud), worms seemingly operating a postmortem postal service between this world and the next, and water cascading from above and bubbling from below, there should be enough in this tale of loss to easily sustain its comparatively short running time.

But amiable though the leads are (Osi Okerafor’s leggy Orpheus who hears music in the depths of his soul and Ony Uhiara’s wide-eyed Eurydice with her passion for books) this patchy analysis of young womanhood caught between paternal and husbandly loves proves dramatically whimsical and emotionally inert.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ (Tube Southwark / Waterloo) 0207 922 2922
www.youngvic.org Till 5th June £17.50 under 26’s £10