Theater review

Last night some friends and I caught the Live Arts Theater’s production of Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman’s stage adaptation of Ovid starring an ensemble cast and a pool of water. It’s kind of Ovidian sampler, featuring some of the more famous myths (Midas, Orpheus and Eurydice, Psyche) and some of the lesser-known ones (Erysichthon, which in this adaptation was both wickedly funny and creepy as hell). I’m a big fan of classics translated into a modern idiom, so I loved seeing the way the myths were transformed in this version: e.g. Phaeton as teenager in sunglasses explaining to his analyst how he demanded of Apollo "Where have you been all my life, Dad? … Give me the keys to your car!"

Other things I loved: four actors becoming a ship for Ceyx’s ocean voyage (two rowers and a figurehead); the inclusion of Rilke’s "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes" in the Orpheus section; the charmingly funny take on Vertumnus and Pomona, bracketing the really disturbing Cinyras and Myrrha episode; the pool full of floating candles at the end; the way the myth of Narcissus made its way in without any words (just an actor staring besottedly at his reflection in the pool, while other actors brought out a tub of narcissi and then carted him off the stage). Also, we were sitting close enough to the stage to get splashed with water once or twice.

You can read the Metamorphoses in Latin at the Perseus Project and the Latin Library, and in English translation from UVa’s Etext Center.

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