Stage-to-screen review: Lights Up -Orpheus in the Record Shop

Virtual theatrical offerings like the BBC's Lights Up festival have been a godsend in terms of keeping some form of theatre going during lockdown and reminding us of what we want to get back to, but they've done the live arts a service even when they don't quite hit the mark: Shows like Orpheus in the Record Shop come with the distinct feeling that they really are missing a dimension when you're not there in the room. Written, composed and performed by Testament, this was a show premiered to a socially distanced audience at Leeds Playhouse during one of the thwarted attempts to come out of lockdown in autumn 2020, and Aletta Collins' production has been reimagined for an (almost) empty auditorium by James Brining and Alex Ramseyer-Bache. Named after the mythical musician better known for his trip to the Underworld, Orpheus owns a failing record shop that trades in vinyl of all genres, but with a focus on his own preference for hip-hop, Northern Soul and funk.

While the connection is not explicitly made, the shop was a passion project for Orpheus after the end of a long-term relationship, although unlike Eurydice his ex Justine isn't dead, just moved to Italy for work. Very few people ever come in and he hasn't been able to pay rent for months, but when an old lady donates a small collection of albums he plays them after hours to figure out how much they're worth, and deals with memories he's been avoiding as he listens.

Riffing on the original myth at times and veering completely from it at others, Orpheus in the Record Shop is told through narrative, song, rap and beatboxing (making for a creative way of adding sound effects,) and whenever Orpheus puts another record on we also get the orchestra and chorus of Opera North adding a real sense of depth. For the Hades figure, Testament casts Orpheus' wearily disappointed father, Everal A Walsh appearing alone in the otherwise empty auditorium. Although the closest thing to an explicit acknowledgement of lockdown is a reference to the shop having reopened a few weeks earlier, there is a definite feel of loneliness to Testament's monologue that connects to everyone's isolation in the last year, and the hope at the play's end is one of reconnecting with the people around him he might have taken for granted. There's not a lot of meat on the story's bones, and this is really a piece built around its clever and charismatic performance style - probably something that would regularly send the hairs on the back of your neck on end in the theatre, but which ends up a bit exposed and flattened on screen.

Orpheus in the Record Shop by Testament is streaming on BBC iPlayer until April 2022 as part of the Lights Up season.

Photo credit: BBC / Leeds Playhouse / Opera North.