Review: Selene at The Substation

Review by Kate Gaul

From the internationally award-winning team behind ORPHEUS and sibling to the acclaimed HELIOS, comes SELENE - unmistakably a work from the fertile imagination of Wright & Grainger, this time written with and placed - gloriously - in the hands of Megan Drury.

The title gestures toward the Greek goddess of the moon, but like so much in this piece, it is a beautiful feint. The story centres instead on Selene’s daughter, Pandia - goddess of the full moon - though any expectation of a tidy mythology lesson is swiftly dissolved. As with previous Wright & Grainger works, antiquity is merely the launchpad. We are catapulted into the modern world: a young girl obsessively replaying the moon landing; teenagers swimming beneath a lunar eclipse; a mismatched couple at a drive-in horror screening. Myth fractures and refracts through the prism of contemporary adolescence.

(Confession: I too grew up obsessed with the first lunar landing and can confidently bore a room about Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins and the Eagle. This show understands that particular, slightly feral lunar fixation.)

Drury is our guide through this orbiting constellation of images. Alone on stage - save for glowing, moon-like orbs - she conjures an entire universe. Her storytelling is rich, muscular and emotionally precise. Confidently stage in the round, Megan Drury shifts between relationships with ease - family members living and dead, friends and frenemies, lovers and almost-lovers - crafting a community around Pandia that feels utterly lived in. At key moments, audience members are invited to read lines aloud, becoming the chorus of characters, wild dogs and wolves. It is a simple device, but it deepens the sense of collective mythmaking; we are not just witnesses but participants in the tale.

The narrative is lyrical yet grounded. Pandia grows up in a small English village near an ancient white chalk horse carved into the hillside - an image that anchors the show in landscape and folklore. From there, we plunge into lakes, race mopeds across dark countryside roads, dance wildly at raves, howl at the night sky, and ultimately step onto the lunar surface itself. Transitions between these worlds are aided by a propulsive, cinematic score that pulses beneath the storytelling like a heartbeat.

But SELENE is not simply an ode to youthful abandon. It is a meditation on what it means to grow up inside a body - and what happens when that body changes. Puberty, identity, desire, shame and grief swirl through the piece like tidal pull. The moon becomes both metaphor and mirror: constant yet shifting, luminous yet shadowed. Pandia is defined by orbit - family expectations, friendship hierarchies, gendered assumptions, the gravitational force of first love. The show asks quietly but insistently: what are we stuck circling? And what would it take to break free?

Humour threads throughout. It is sharp, self-aware and often deliciously irreverent. Drury’s timing is impeccable. She allows moments to land, then tilts them sideways; she builds tension and releases it with a glance or perfectly weighted pause. The audience is held close, and we recognise ourselves in Pandia’s awkwardness, her yearning, her wildness.

Visually and sonically, the production leans into simplicity, trusting story and performer above spectacle. It is a wise choice. Drury’s performance is magnetic - luminous without sentimentality, fierce without sacrificing vulnerability. She makes the cosmic feel intimate and the intimate feel epic.

In just around an hour, SELENE achieves something quietly remarkable: we witness a girl transform into a goddess - and, in doing so, recognise the mythic proportions of our own coming-of-age stories. It is joyous, funny, heartfelt and deeply life-affirming. A radical exploding of ancient myth, yes - but also a tender excavation of the wildness inside us.

Go for the mythology and moon landing. Stay for Megan Drury. Leave contemplating your own light and dark sides - and what you are still orbiting.

Image Supplied