Metamorphoses

[September 6th, 2006] [DRENCHED DRAMA] As summer winds down and the fall arts season begins, we begin to shelve our sun-drenched fantasies of godlike bodies by the pool to focus on—godlike bodies in a pool?

That's right. Artists Repertory Theatre is kicking its season off with Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman's sublime adaptation of Ovid's classic telling of Greek and Roman myths. It features a cast of well-known Hellenic superstars (Orpheus, Midas, Bacchus, Eros and the gang) mingling around a 4-foot-deep, onstage swimming pool.

Ovid's fantastic morality tales—brought to life by a scantily clad ensemble of local actors including Wade McCollum (Hedwig, One), Marjorie Tatum (Clean), Andres Alcalá (Men on the Verge 2) and Christine Calfas (O Lovely Glowworm)—make an aptly mystical foundation for Zimmerman's musings on loss and transformation. It is a funny, moving and deeply spiritual work.

Metamorphoses opened in New York in late 2001, to an off-Broadway audience still reeling from the World Trade Center bombings. The show was a huge success and has been credited with helping to heal the devastated theater community and, according to some, the city as a whole. After over 400 performances, Zimmerman made the unusual move of releasing first performance rights to high schools. Students in Portland have already mounted the production twice, taking advantage of their easy access to the contractually required swimming pool.

Director Randall Stuart, last seen in ART's production of Assassins (and a longtime fixture in the Northwest's theater scene), says the play bridges the gulf between classical theater and modern pop culture: "It's all in very kicky modern vernacular. [Zimmerman] has created a great justice in creating a piece that is a theater event...but once you're in the room you've got a sacred, ancient—i.e., classical—scenario."

Stuart, who directed the largest of 2003's antiwar productions of Lysistrata, believes Metamorphoses is "a great balm for reading the front page in these times when all hell is breaking loose, because the play answers something about heaven.... Audiences leave healed, ready to go out and make peace."

He may be right. But the play is first and foremost a tremendously sincere piece of theater, an antidote to the trite, half-sarcastic swill that is America's cultural fast food—and a fine selection of dripping eye candy, to boot.