My first encounter with this two-part storytelling-and-song exercise was during the Sydney Fringe Festival in  2019, in the small reading room of what used to be the Newtown School of Arts.

It’s essentially the same (lovely) show, but this time scaled up and presented in one of the most splendid libraries in the country: the Mortlock Chamber in the State Library of South Australia. The work now comes accompanied by a string quartet, too.

Written and performed by Alexander Wright and singer-guitarist Phil Clive Grainger, ORPHEUS transposes the ancient Greek myth to the modern-day city. Our Orpheus is a quiet, musically gifted young chap named Dave, who encounters the great love of his life one night during a blackout at a karaoke bar while singing Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark. If that sounds a little pedestrian for such a mythic meeting … well, trust me, it isn’t.

Wright&Grainger’s ORPEUS. Photo © Mau Seghetto

Told at breakneck speed in slam-poetry style and interspersed with soaring folk-pop songs, Orpheus aims straight for the heart and hits it most of the time....