THERE was only one room where you could stage a Greek play at Castle Howard’s stately pile: the Grecian Hall, of course.

The North Yorkshire duo of Phil Grainger, of Gobbledigook Theatre, and Alexander Flanagan Wright, of The Flanagan Collective, set it up as a traverse theatre, performing down the middle and sometimes down the sides behind the chairs, as they swapped positions regularly to match the ebb and flow of this story-telling musical two-hander.

Like Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, troubadour guitarist and singer Grainger and yarn spinner Wright have taken off their shoes, placing a pair at either end, with a glass of water and a glass of something stronger either side. Grainger is wearing flamboyantly striped pantaloons, Wright is sporting newly acquired light and dark blue socks, seemingly a present to himself after turning 30.

We learn this amid the informality of the opening exchanges, hearing of Grainger taking the show to the Adelaide fringe with award-winning success, and then Wright starts to read from a notebook, to the accompaniment of Grainger’s empathetic guitar, and in no time we are drawn into the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Or rather Dave and Eurydice, for this is a modern re-telling, even if Eurydice is still the Greek mythical daughter of Apollo; Dave has boozy, leery mates at the bar, but love, love, love, transports him from there, yet this love is cruelly cut short. He’s smitten, but she’s bitten, and Dave must make his case to free her from the clasp of the Underworld/Hades, from where no-one has ever returned alive.

Such are Wright’s poetic powers of transcendent language, rhythmically interwoven with the soaring singing of Grainger’s soulful songs, that Dave must stand a better chance than anyone of securing her release. He even loves in colours, Eyridyce giving off an aura of yellow and blue. 

Hell, yeah, this Orpheus is a hymn to love wrapped in a beautiful, magical, heart-pounding piece of high-stakes theatre, Bruce Springsteen singalong and all.