Surrounded by thousands of books, all with their own stories to tell, Wright & Grainger’s ORPHEUS & EURYDICE are my top pick of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, best seen in tandem. Both ORPHEUS & EURYDICE is Greek Mythology at its best, told with such reverance, heart and soul that you’ll believe in the impossibilties of love.

With ORPHEUS performed by Alexander Wright and EURYDICE performed by Megan Shandley, both feature Phil Clive Grainger on instrumentals. Wright’s words are a poetic tapestry of ideas. He weaves storytelling of the Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice fluently into the everyday, creating a realm of existence that is modern and timeless in the same moment. In this staging, both shows are supported by a string quartet and choir, with Michael O’Donnell, Mae Napier-Traeger/Hannah Pelka-Caven on violin, Jenny Thomas on viola and Allye Sinclair on cello.

Within the Mortlock Chamber in the State Library of South Australia, the storytellers perform in traverse. They stride up and down the stage opposite each other, crossing each other and, at time, stepping off-stage to highlight key moments.

In ORPHEUS, Grainger lays a foundation of music on guitar, strumming instrumentals throughout with the soul of Bruce Springsteen. Reading out of a well-loved journal, Wright tells the tale of Dave, a young man who sees the world in black and white (literally). He’s lost in life, stuck in a void of rounds of beers with mates at the pub, always the outsider. He has a gift, a gift for song. And one fateful night at karaoke in the middle of a blackout, his acapella singing of ‘Dancing in the Dark’ draws light into his world: Eurydice. From here, the tale flows. They fall in love and marry, she dies and her body crosses to the Underworld, leading the Gods to bless Dave on his journey to save Eurydice whose loss breaks the world through Dave’s mourning.

ORPHEUS is the closest you’ll get to church at the Fringe Festival. Or at least a version of it. We’re not just onlookers in this tale, but at times we’re the Gods looking on mournfully, we are the lost souls of Hades, we are the chorus singing Springsteen. As the quartet move down from their parapet on the second floor of the library, the sounds of strings and chorus envelope us. This is music therapy.

The sister show, EURYDICE tells the tragic Greek tale from the perspective of the heroine and Orpheus’ other half. In history we only know one perspective, that of Orpheus. But who is Eurydice before their life-changing encounter? Shandler reads out of her own well-loved journal as we learn of a girl who wanted to be a superhero, dressing as Superman from a young age, full of light and colour. She knows of the fate of her tale, this Orpheus, a boy who plays the lyre who she is meant to meet and will define her life. But she refuses this.

Instead, we follow her passionate love story with Aristaeus, the God of bees and agriculture, who sings his own songs and constructs his own tale with her. But, this is the tale of Eurydice and Orpheus, not Eurydice and Aristaeus, and so her tale journeys onwards guided by fate.

In comparison to ORPHEUS, this second act isn’t as freeflowing, but this purely rests on experience and repetition. Whereas Wright has the words of ORPHEUS ingrained into his very bones by now (being their longest performed show), Shandler is more performative, though breathakingly beautfil nonetheless.

Connecting the two, Grainger’s vocals are a performance unto themselves. Sounding like a mix between Jack Johnson and Bruce Springsteen, he uses vocal fry to astonishing effect. Jumping between acoustic guitar in ORPHEUS to looping soundboard in EURYDICE, you can do a whole thesis on the use of music within the piece itself.

I cannot recommend these shows highly enough. They are the definition of a must see. Do the double bill, laugh, cry and journey into the intertwining worlds of love and fate.