Review: "Saturn's Return" Probes a Community in Desperate Decline
Saturn's Return Written by Chance Muehleck Directed by Melanie S. Armer Presented by Nerve Tank Media Available on Nerve Tank's website and all major podcast apps Image from Saturn's Return AD — Nerve Tank Media At the center of Saturn's Retur n, by Chance Muehleck, looms a present absence. This atmospheric limited series audio drama, adapted from Muehleck's 2021 stage play, which debuted at Tompkins Corners Cultural Center, is set in the town of Barthos, most of whose residents attribute the good fortune of the community and its people to a figure known as the Yellow King. The mythological Saturn ruled over a golden age of plenty, but The Yellow King, in his appellation and his function, additionally brings to mind both Robert W. Chambers's King in Yellow, a figure in a text that brings madness or death to those who read it, and the sacred kings of James Frazer's The Golden Bough , who ensure the fertility of the land (including by being sacrificed), but i...