Playbox Theatre presents ORFEO

Jun 17
2 min read

Playbox cast of ORFEO. Photo courtesy of Luci Barriball.

Playbox Theatre presents ORFEO - A Midsummer night's journey from dusk to dawn. Saturday 20 (audience arrivals from 10pm) to Sunday 21 June 2026. At The Dream Factory, Warwick.

This Midsummer Night, audiences are invited to step beyond theatre and enter an extraordinary overnight journey through love, celebration, loss, memory, music, and the Underworld itself.

For the first time in its history, Playbox Theatre presents a fully immersive dusk-to-dawn theatrical event: ORFEO, a large-scale contemporary reimagining of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice staged across indoor and outdoor environments at the Dream Factory, Warwick.

A dusk to dawn performance. Photo courtesy of Lucy Barriball.

Part wedding celebration.Part immersive theatre experience.Part midnight cabaret.Part ritual journey into darkness and dawn. Guests attending ORFEO are invited not simply to watch the story, but to become part of it.

The night begins with the wedding celebration of Orpheus and Eurydice beneath the midsummer sky. Audiences arrive as invited wedding guests, moving through music, food, conversation, performance, and celebration before the world fractures unexpectedly and Orpheus begins his impossible descent into the Underworld.

Across the shortest night of the year, audiences and performers travel together through shifting theatrical landscapes:

outdoor ceremony spaces, dreamlike interiors, movement installations, cabaret performance, live music, ritual encounters, and the spectacular midnight world of Club Enfers.

Created by an ensemble of over forty young performers, ORFEO combines classical myth with contemporary imagery and music spanning centuries and genres.

Source material includes:

Ovid,
Monteverdi,
Gluck,
the Sonnets to Orpheus of Rainer Maria Rilke,
Jean Anouilh,
and original devised material created by the company.

Playbox cast. Photo courtesy of Lucy Barriball.

The production is directed by Stewart McGill, Consultant Director to Playbox Theatre, with choreography for Club Enfers by Hannah Hampson and technical direction by Richard Cooper.

The role of Orfeo is performed by Dylan Somanathan and the Ferryman by Eve Hatz, in their final Playbox performances before beginning three years of actor training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

ORFEO also marks a landmark moment in the continuing evolution of immersive and ensemble theatre at Playbox Theatre, blending movement, music, cabaret, contemporary performance, classical source material, and overnight theatrical experience into one unrepeatable event.

As midnight deepens, Monteverdi collides with post-punk lament, industrial soundscapes merge with wedding songs, and ancient myth encounters contemporary visions of borders, memory, grief, and return.

The night concludes at dawn with first-light breakfast served to audiences and performers together as the midsummer sun rises over Warwick.