Orpheus Underground

Bethany Hill, David Hidden and audience, Orpheus Underground, Treasury Tunnels, Adina Hotel Adelaide May 2017

Orpheus Underground, created for the Treasury Tunnels beneath the Adina Hotel in the centre of Adelaide, invites intimate audiences to join Orpheus and Eurydice’s wedding party. They are greeted with glasses of champagne and included in the reception chatter like old friends, before joining a toast to the bride and groom.

As the story unfolds, the audience venture further into the tunnels with the singers and musicians, following Orpheus on his quest to recover his beloved Eurydice from the underworld. All pay a token to Charon to cross into the underworld, a third space deep below the surface where Eurydice resists Orpheus’s pleas and finally returns to her new abode, to the strains of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Eurydice and Vaughan William’s beautiful art song Orpheus with his Lute. Other music is by Monteverdi, Peri, Gluck and Pergolesi, accompanied by archlute, with additional poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Conceived and directed by Cheryl Pickering

Designed by Emma O’Neill

Performed by Bethany Hill, Cassandra Humble, Kate Macfarlane, David Hidden and David Cox, with Andrew Byrne on archlute.

Orpheus Underground was truly adventurous... intense and memorable.

Gillian Dooley, Australian Book Review


The cast...was fantastic

Melanie Walters, The Advertiser


Orpheus Underground overflowed with creativity. Theatrically vivid and studded with some exceptional singing...

Graham Strahle, The Adelaide Review