Fringe review: Wright & Grainger’s Eurydice
Celebrated UK theatre-makers Wright & Grainger bring the ancient gods into the modern world with a reimagining of Orpheus and Eurydice’s tragic romance – but this time Eurydice can finally tell her own story. ★★★★
Music-makers and spoken-word storytellers Alexander Wright and Phil Grainger have been touring their mythologically inspired, immersive theatre productions since 2016, and they’ve clearly struck a rich seam. Their acclaimed Orpheus continues to tour internationally (and is also playing at the Adelaide Fringe), while its companion piece Eurydice – resurrected for the first time in six years – finds an ideal home within the intimate grandeur of the Mortlock Chamber at the State Library of South Australia.
The story opens with Eurydice (known as Leni) at five years old, brimming with precocious demi-god power, to the delight and exasperation of her mother, Ceres. Leni insists on wearing her Superman costume to her first day of school, determined that her outward appearance match the person she already knows herself to be. It’s a deceptively simple image that establishes the work’s central theme: the power of asserting one’s own identity.
From here, the narrative leaps across the years, reimagining the pursuit of Aristeus – god of bees – as a formative teenage relationship. Leni meets Ari in Year 10 and they fall hard, marry young, and spin through their shared youth in an extended honeymoon blur. Then it all collapses. Cue heartbreak, grief, and the eventual emergence of the love story that history remembers – though rarely from Eurydice’s perspective.
Wright and Grainger flip the script in this vivid reworking of Virgil’s ancient tale. By interlacing Alex Wright’s intense spoken-word poetry and lyrics with Phil Grainger’s potent musical compositions, Eurydice restores voice and agency to a figure who has been pushed to the narrative sidelines within her own story.
Staged on a long, runway-like strip through the Mortlock Chamber, the production is striking in its restraint. There are just two performers: Megan Shandley, who delivers Eurydice’s story with a brilliant mix of wit and compassion and Phil Grainger, who moves between guitar and MIDI keyboard, providing rhythm, atmosphere and the occasional harmony. Together they are consummate storytellers, stalking the stage as spoken word and music braid together to grant the story its impressive emotional heft.
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The writing is particularly impressive. The use of contemporary imagery and urban setting create points of immediate resonance with the audience, allowing the work to function simultaneously as mythic retelling and forensic examination of a modern relationship. Lines, images and musical motifs repeatedly circle back, subtly shifting in meaning as fresh context is revealed. These callbacks accumulate over the 70-minute run time to create a performance rich with narrative and structural flair.
The show’s emotional power is further enriched by the inclusion of a string quartet, whose roaming presence – appearing on stage, in the library’s alcoves and on the balconies (with a cello!) – adds a gorgeous depth to the score. The result is a work that feels both intimate and expansive, grounded in the modern world while echoing with the timelessness of myth.
This dynamic meld of word and music will appeal to anyone with a love of clever narratives powerfully told, proving that some tales need retelling if we are ever to appreciate the full story.
Eurydice is playing at the Mortlock Chamber of the State Library of South Australia as part of the Courtyard of Curiosities from February 19 – March 22
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