Metamorphoses: A Play FROM THE PUBLISHER
Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses brings Ovid's tales to stunning visual life. Set in and around a large pool of water onstage, Metamorphoses juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image to reflect the variety and persistence of narrative in the face of inevitable change. Metamorphoses played around the country and Off Broadway before moving to Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre in March 2002.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New Yorker
Ovid's Metamorphoses, says Madeleine Foray, "changes in the hands of each new translator and adapter." Her introduction to a new edition of Arthur Golding's 1567 English translation of the Metamorphoses shows how he Christianizes Ovid, transforming his temples into churches with spires. The translation was influential with Shakespeare and Spenser, but its bombastic style later fell out of fashion. One recent editor complains that Golding turned "the sophisticated Roman into a ruddy country gentleman with tremendous gusto and a gift for energetic doggerel."
A few years ago, the sensual savagery of Ted Hughes's Tales from Ovid won wide acclaim. Meanwhile, novels like David Malouf's An Imaginary Life and Jane Alison's The Love Artist have built their narratives on what little we know of Ovid's actual biography. In Malouf's book, Ovid finds and civilizes a feral child, in a clever reversal of the people-to-animal transformations of the Metamorphoses. Most recently, Mary Zimmerman's award-winning play Metamorphoses presents the work as a parable about the healing power of love.
By contrast, Alessandro Boffa's comic novel, You're An Animal, Viskovitz!, sees metamorphosis as a cosmic bad joke; the hero is figured as a different animal in each chapter. During his time as a snail, he acts out an undignified parody of the Narcissus myth; Viskovitz is attracted by his own reflection in water, but the consummation makes for one of the oddest sex scenes of recent years: "I felt the warm pressure of the rhinophor slipping under my shell, and a strong agitation froze the center of my being."(Leo Carey)
Library Journal
First performed by students at Northwestern University, where playwright Zimmerman is a professor of performance studies (she is also Manilow Resident Director at the Goodman Theater in Chicago), this play opened at Broadway's Circle on the Square Theater in March 2002. Based on Ovid's transformation myths, the play subtly mixes the ancient stories of pathos and tragedy with contemporary language, humor, and thought, all enacted in and around a large pool of water in the center of the stage. The themes of love, the inevitability of change, and the human ability to adapt to change are timeless, as is amply demonstrated by the sometimes eerie closeness of a vignette to the original lines from Ovid, which still manage to resonate with modern viewers. The volume includes the script, a production history, and photographs from several productions. A valuable addition to either drama/ theater or mythology collections, this play by Zimmerman, who has also adapted and directed The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, The Odyssey, The Arabian Nights, and others, is highly recommended for public, academic, and high school libraries. Katherine K. Koenig, Ellis Sch., Pittsburgh Performing Arts Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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