Selene - 9.5 out of 10 Wright&Grainger, Theatre@41, Joanne Hartsone Presents TICKETS: Wright&Grainger's SELENE | Adelaide Fringe
Creative team Alexander Wright & Phil Clive Grainger, professionally known as Wright&Grainger, bring their newest retelling of ancient Greek mythology, Selene, to the Courtyard of Curiosities, in partnership with UK theatre company Theatre@41 and South Australian theatre artist and producer Joanne Hartstone Presents.
In this powerful one-woman show - accompanied only by music, lighting and the voices of the audience - Selene, the goddess of the moon, is reimagined as a mother working nights, while her child, Pandia, comes of age on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors.
Pandia (also known as Panda, continuing Wright&Grainger’s delightful convention of providing fun nicknames to classic mythological figures) is outspoken, nonconformist, and weighed down by society’s expectations that envelops their small-town life. Panda spends her time watching videos of the moon landing (over and over again), listening to Fleetwood Mac, and determinedly refusing to bond with one of her classmates, despite their shared obsession with the moon.
Panda is portrayed by Megan Drury with both fire and whimsy. Drury guides us through a journey of Panda’s relationship with herself and the other people in her small-town orbit, through evocative facial expression and body language - her performance is minimalist out of necessity, due to the venue’s small size, and yet absorbing and seemingly effortless. She draws the audience in with playful humour, while also perfectly encapsulating Panda’s feelings of injustice, confusion, longing, and finally, acceptance. Drury fluently navigates the complex tonal shifts throughout the play, balancing jokes and snarky teenage comments with grief and longing and fear, and with the joy and exhilaration of finally growing into the person you are supposed to be.
Wright&Grainger’s impeccable writing creates a sense of magic, palpable in even the most mundane of settings and ordinary life experiences. The soundtrack is understated but evocative, creating a heightened atmosphere that builds tension throughout the show. The lighting, including the featured central globe lamp and the various moon-shaped lights scattered around the edges of the yurt, serve the story well, cleverly suggesting different timeframes and settings throughout the show. The colourful and flickering lights in the disco scene are particularly effective, as is the darkness that intensifies and draws focus to Drury’s fantastic performance in one climactic and emotional monologue.
The joy of Selene is in its audience participation, centring collaborative storytelling as the intimate circle of spectators take hold of simplified scripts and become performers in their own right, including a boisterous Happy New Year cheer and raucous, wild, howling from the entire audience (no, there are not really wolves in the Courtyard of Curiosities despite what you can hear…they’re probably just big dogs? Or maybe werewolves. Who can tell in the twilight?)
Above all, Selene is a story of hope. It is a reminder to value our short lives, finding moments of beauty in the mundane and every day. It is a reminder that we reflect the people we surround ourselves with, and yet we are whole with or without them. Most inspiring of all, Selene reminds us of our power and agency, so that we can create our own way in life, turning the imagined into something true.
- Georjette Mercer
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