Review: Days from death, two musicians grapple with life in Guthrie’s ‘Ruins’

After five years, the Guthrie Theater has reopened its Dowling Studio, the flexible black box space named in honor of former artistic director Joe Dowling.

And the company has chosen a mystical and moving meditation on the meaning and quality of life as the first work to reanimate the space.

“The Ruins,” which opened in a music-infused premiere Sunday, is a captivating one-act that asks big questions.

Like, if you had three or four days to live, how would you spend them? And what is the most meaningful thing that you could do right now?

Written and performed by George Abud, a gifted player of the lute-like oud, “Ruins” uses death to backlight life. Directed with accordion-like compression and intensity by Osh Ashruf, the action plays out in a spare room that’s a way station for those living out their last days.

But relax, it’s not a downer. Far from it. Barefoot and coiled like a ready-to-pounce cat, Abud has the feral edge of one who finally realizes that niceties and manners can get in the way of truth and living. The bare space that he’s now inhabiting with his sleeping pad and instrument is designed for two. And soon he has a roommate — played by cellist Sydney Shepherd, one who also is at the end of her days.

What follows is an interaction that’s part tense couples therapy, part George Burns and Gracie Allen comedy routine. Both barefoot and vulnerable, the two strangers who are now death mates claw at each other verbally until they find common ground.

The result is musically thrilling in the well-used Dowling, where the combination of the two instruments sounds fresh and revelatory. It’s as if these two strangers were seeing in each other an unexpected mirror.

But there’s also enlightenment by juxtaposition. “Ruins” shows cultural similarities between the West and the Arab world, and also draws from the wellspring of Arab classics for an American audience.

Specifically, Abud quotes passages and aphorisms from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” like holy text. They land with depth and precision, and perfectly summarize human characteristics.

Soon his roommate is calling him Kahlil. And, he returns the favor, calling her Tom, for Shepherd has brought along a book, Tom Robbins’ “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.”

The two get jazzed by asking for passages to be read from random pages.

“Ruins,” ultimately, is about presence. For while the characters are living out their last hours, they show no fear for what’s to come, or regret for a past that cannot be changed.

Instead, they live in the tense present, exulting in noise and quiet, in light and a serene kind of transcendence. May our everyday be such a blessing.

When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 1 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 1 & 7 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 12.

Where: Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Mpls.