About 2000 years ago, a Roman poet named Ovid gathered together a collection of myths, legends, and stories and put them in epic poetry form. Some 250 stories, occupying 15 volumes. Lotta gods, lotta kings, lotta violence. That collection has survived to the present and has become one of our (usually unread) cultural foundation stones.
Here we have is a few of those stories, starting with a creation myth and running through the deification of Augustus Caesar (with Phaeton and the chariot of the sun as a bonus round). We have an Orpheus story (but not the one with Eurydice), Medea, Actaeon watching Diana bathing, Midas, and an argument between Jupiter and Juno arguing about who gets more out of sex - the man or the woman. It is not a "greatest hits" album, and there is a nice mix of the familiar and the forgotten.
And that's part of the problem here - it is a grab-bag of stories, so it starts, stops, and starts again. It doesn't build up a good head of steam, and you're left trying to figure out how everything fits together. The theme is stated as "what it mean to be human", but that doesn't seem to fit snuggly in with the vast variety of stories it contains.
What it does do is present a whole raft of storytelling styles, but it does it subtley, so I'm not sure if that's an intended point. The Juno/Jupiter argument opens up to audience presentation. It is followed by a tale of Bacchus that comes off as a flop-sweat comedian's routine. We have a singalong (geared to the age of most of the audience), a song about how sucky Midas is, and traditional story-telling of friends around a campfire. It is interesting, but uneven.
What is excellent is the ensemble - Kjerstine Rose Anderson, Meme Garcia, Nike Imoru, and Darragh Kennan. Most have been at the Rep before, and I'm a sucker for returning actors. They also are excellent storytellers, and I could listen to them for much longer than the 90 minutes.
And the set is fine, though is outdone by the rotating platform and beaded scrim in the theater next door. The props are onstage, but come apart and enter into the stories, and in the end, the stage itself is a shambles. Which may be a point as well, but I'm just not sure.
It feels like a missed opportunity. If we're going to delve into various ways we tell stories (and, mind you, Ovid himself was all over the joint on his storytelling), they could expand it out. Daedelus and Icarus as a powerpoint. A point/counterpoint of Noah and Deucalion. The deification of Augustus as letter of recommendation. Something that could bring things together. As I said, 250 stories in the naked Greek isles, and these are just a few of them. AND telling stories in what makes us human.
Over twenty years ago, the Lovely Bride and I saw another production of Metamorphoses. Mary Zimmerman's version, presented by the Seattle Rep at the former Intiman stage across the way. It told some of the same tales, and took advantage of the seats rising around a thrust stage to put a swimming pool in the center. And it felt that that production hung together more, though it took some of the same stories as the base. This production was OK, but pales in the memory of that one. It is not bad. It is just OK.
More later,
