Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” is a modernized reworking of the ancient Greek play recorded by Ovid in his “Metamorphoses.” Ruhl has set it in the late 1940s to the early 1950s.

Eurydice’s father (Mark Chamberlin) has died and is in Hades, the underworld, home of the dead and their keepers. As the dead come to Hades, they are dipped into the River of Forgetfulness, a move to relieve the pain of remembering and missing loved ones. Father’s forgetfulness is incomplete; he remembers his daughter and writes her a letter. In his letter he says, “...I am one of the few dead people who remembers how to read and write. That’s a secret. If anyone finds out they might dip me in the river again.”

Eurydice (Renata Friedman) and Orpheus (Trick Danneker) are young and madly in love. Their love is a little sappy, sticky and obsessive, as if it is the first love for 15-year-olds. They play, they coo, they kiss, he gives her the ocean, the stars and a song he’s written just for her.

They are getting married, but as soon as the wedding has been completed Eurydice leaves the reception and goes to an outdoor faucet to get a drink of water. She hates parties and just wants to be with Orpheus.

The snake in Paradise, the Nasty Interesting Man (Paul Morgan Stetler), comes up to her and asks her if she’d like to go to a party with interesting people. She declines and he goes away. After she sends him away, he catches a letter that comes up from Hades. He returns to the party and he tells Eurydice that he has a letter from her father but he left it in his apartment. She accompanies him up six flights of stairs to get her letter. The Man comes on to her so she leads him on, takes her letter and attempts to run away. Unfortunately, she trips and falls out a window and dies. The last word from her lips is a shout, “Orpheus!”

She descends to Hades in an unusual way (watch for this, it’s amazing). She and her father recognize and are happy to see each other but she has a hard time adjusting to “life” without Orpheus. To assuage her loneliness, her father builds her a “room” from string. This construction is so concentrated, so reassuring, and so poetic, it reassures her. (The strings secured to the floor are the same ones that Orpheus has plucked to compose his song to Eurydice and the same her father uses as the walls of her room.)

Ruhl employs the ancient Greek device, the chorus that comments on the action, to great effect. The chorus is three stones, three actors in gray makeup and grayed hair dressed in gray and dingy white clothes. The Loud Stone (Anne Allgood) wears a very distinctive, glittery, dark gray turban; she is the most vocal. The Big Stone (Tim Hyland) is an enormous guy, bald with a belly out to there, who wears a gray and whitish-gray horizontally striped union suit with a few buttons unbuttoned or missing. The Little Stone (Tracy Hyland) is the youngest and most sympathetic stone: “We might say, poor Eurydice - but stones don’t feel bad for dead people.”

Meanwhile Orpheus is so disconsolate, he sings his grief. This music is so moving, even the gods and the Stones cry. As a result of his eloquence, Orpheus is allowed to go to Hades and bring Eurydice home with him, but he must walk straight out and not turn around. He will have to have faith that Eurydice is following him. When Eurydice gets ready to leave with Orpheus, her father is disconsolate, and pours a cup of water on his head, to forget the pain of knowing he’s lost her until she dies again.

As they start out, she calls out to Orpheus and he turn around. Consequently, Orpheus and Eurydice must be parted. When Eurydice gets back to Hades, she is crushed to realize her father doesn’t know her anymore. She pours a cup of water on her head to forget her longing for her father and husband.

Then Orpheus comes down to Hades, having been adequately dipped in the River of Forgetfulness. He doesn’t even know he doesn’t know Eurydice any more.

Matthew Smucker’s scenic design took advantage of the theater in the round. The Stones usually sat on stairs watching the action, unless they were crawling about, trying to influence someone. The device, the raining water of forgetfulness that takes the dead to Hades, is so effective. The sixth floor apartment was played by a diving tower, with the board broken off. The broken board is used by her father as the path to the door of her room. The abandoned blue-tile pool floor is littered with pieces of paper, symbolically the letters that the dead and alive send to each other via a worm.

Melanie Taylor Burgess’ costumes are completely right. The Father, Eurydice and Orpheus wear contemporary clothing. The Stones were described above. The Interesting Nasty Man wears dark nondescript clothes as the creep trying to hustle Eurydice. The Interesting Nasty Child shows up three times. The first time he’s wearing a young schoolboy’s uniform, complete with red and yellow beanie, all the while riding a huge red tricycle. He speaks and acts like a young child. When he comes the second time, the uniform fits him but the trike is smaller. When he appears the last time, he has a miniature trike and is dressed in miniaturized clothes.

The play has many surprisingly funny bits. Director Allison Narver never lets the solemn or the comic upstage each other. Everything is crisp and clean.

“Eurydice” runs until Oct. 5 at the ACT in Seattle. It’s not appropriate for young children although a mature teen might enjoy the “Romeo and Juliet” angst of first love.

For information and tickets, call the ticket office at (206) 292-7676, go online at www.acttheatre.org or go to the ticket office at 700 Union St., Seattle.