Styx is equal parts an exploration of the concept of memory, a love letter to lifelong love and music, and a contemporary retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus. What should seem like a messy combination of themes and methods of storytelling, is actually a cohesive, innovative and heartwarming piece of storytelling and gig theatre. The piece is produced by Second Body and runs at Assembly George Square Gardens from the 10th – 15th August at 6:40pm.
It’s worth noting that, before the pandemic, Styx took a notably different form. Their musical ensemble would boast eight members and there would be more physical interaction with the audience during the ending moments of the piece. However, we only know this because the performer (also writer/director), Max Barton, addresses it, both at the start of the piece as he asks for the audience’s help with something that he’d usually use his band for, and at the end, through a hopeful and heartwarming recorded conversation between him and his eighty-nine-year-old grandmother regarding the pandemic’s impact on both personal and professional life as an artist. If he neglected to tell me that this 75-minute alt-rock adventure had undergone such significant changes, I’d have assumed that everything was designed to be exactly the way it was performed.
The piece now only features two performers, Barton as the main storyteller/singer/guitarist alongside multi-instrumentalist and composer Jethro Cooke, who also offers more factual segments throughout the piece regarding how our brains work in relation to memory. The two have a brilliant chemistry together and Barton is an incredible performer, oozing sincerity and charisma in everything that he does during his performance, it’s incredibly easy to feel immersed in his story.
The pair perform a series of tracks that feel full and complete, even without the other six performers, with beautiful instrumentation and soaring harmonies, accompanied by lighting design that completes the hauntingly beautiful atmosphere of it all.
The performance also features the voice of Barton’s grandmother, Flora, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. The verbatim recordings offer a truly intimate and human quality to the piece as a whole, and ironically offer the most levity amongst the heaviness of the rest of the themes. The love between her and Barton’s late grandfather is truly heartwarming/breaking in equal measure.
Styx was a truly wonderful return to the fringe for me, a welcome reminder of the unifying effect that theatre can have on us all, and a reminder that regardless of how overwhelming things may seem, there is always beauty to be found in the concept of the unknown.
