When the audience files into Judy’s Room at Holden Street Theatres, Silenus is already there. Or rather, sprawled there. Passed out on the floor. Empty cans of Prancing Pony IPA and Tiger Beer litter the stage. A karaoke screen glows on the wall. The machine is still switched on. And next to Silenus’ hand lies a monstrous, translucent pink dildo.

It’s going to be that kind of night.

Euripides’ Cyclops is the only surviving satyr play from Ancient Greece. It was always meant to be the wild afterparty to high tragedy. Panic Theatre’s Cyclops: A Satyr Play, supported by Talk Is Free Theatre (the company behind Adelaide Fringe’s Best Theatre winner Every Brilliant Thing), honours that tradition by dragging the whole thing through a queer, techno-pop fever dream.

Silenus, played by Canadian writer and actor Griffin Hewitt, eventually wakes. Memory hazy. He tidies the beer cans. The dildo stays put. That’s for later. What follows is a retelling of Odysseus and Polyphemus set somewhere between Mount Aetna and a sticky-floored club night.

The premise is familiar. Odysseus arrives in Sicily after the Trojan War. He meets Silenus and the satyrs, enslaved by the giant Cyclops. There’s wine. There’s betrayal. There’s a drunken blinding with a burning stake. But this production refracts the myth through karaoke, club culture and audience complicity.

Original Euripidean verses are delivered in faithful, muscular monologues at key moments. They land surprisingly well amid the chaos. Then the show swerves into karaoke bangers, audience interaction and camp absurdity. The viewers become the chorus of satyrs. We bleat. We chant. We enable.

It is both highbrow and deeply, gloriously low.

Euripides’ Cyclops worships only his belly. He sacrifices to appetite. He mocks morality as something invented by the weak. This production draws a neat parallel with modern excess. Booze. Bongs. Sex. Karaoke. Consumption as identity. The satyr becomes a figure of queer inversion. Masculine and feminine. Ridiculous and erotic. Pitiful and terrifying.

The satyrs here are drunken goats with texta-drawn moustaches swinging dildos while quoting Euripides. It shouldn’t work. It absolutely does.

The comedy lands more cleanly than the tragedy. The jokes hit. The audience’s energy builds. When the satyrs balk at helping Odysseus blind the Cyclops, the absurd excuses feel delightfully contemporary. But beneath the laughter is something sharper. The play foregrounds a central question from Euripides: who decides morality?

Near the end, the audience is given three choices about how the story should resolve. There is debate. Genuine discussion. It feels almost civic. We reach an agreement. And yet, no matter what we choose, the story ends the same way.

Nihilism? Maybe. Or a reminder that people, not gods, are the source of morality. Euripides flirted with impiety. This production embraces it.

Understanding the satyr play form and Greek mythology deepens the experience. There are nods to Bakhtin’s “grotesque ingestion.” The Cyclops’ obsession with his belly. The inversion of norms. But the show never requires a classics degree. It just rewards it.

The performer’s ease within the small room is impressive. Judy’s Room is intimate. There is nowhere to hide. The interaction never feels forced. The karaoke never feels lazy. It feels curated. Controlled chaos.

If there is a limitation, it is tonal balance. The tragic undercurrents occasionally get swallowed by the revelry. But perhaps that is the point of a satyr play. Tragedy followed by release.

This is peak Fringe. Wild. Smart. Profane. Thoughtful. Euripides would probably have approved. After a few drinks.