Metamorphoses
by David R Slavitt, Mary Zimmerman

Broadway Off-Broadway
Metamorphoses Book Cover
Metamorphoses Cover

Highlights

90 mins Ensemble Cast Expandable Casting Flexible Cast Size Unit Set/Multiple Settings American Adaptation

Awards & Recognition

Drama Desk Award Drama League Award Lucille Lortel Award Tony Award

Winner! 2002 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play (Mary Zimmerman) Nominee: Three 2002 Tony Awards, including Best Play Winner! Four 2002 Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Play Winner! 2002 Drama League Award for Best Play Winner! 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play

Synopsis

A beautiful and deeply humane reanimation of Ovid's myths Called by Time the "theater event of the year," 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.

Nominated for three 2002 Tony Awards, including "Best Play," Metamorphoses earned Zimmerman a Tony for "Best Direction of a Play."

Press Reviews

"An elegant recounting of some familiar, and some not-so-familiar, Greek myths [that] contemplates – in distinctly modern, highly evocative stagecraft – the relevance of these classical tales to our contemporary world."

— Variety

"Metamorphoses is perfect theatrical storytelling that never stumbles or strikes a false note. Zimmerman’s approach is painterly and literary but also acrobatically physical, and the ten-member cast bring it to life, combining athletic movement with beautifully spoken narration."

— Chicago Reader

"The genius of this piece – and I think Metamorphoses is that rare work of collective theatrical genius that deserves wide exposure to a new generation – is that it does not feel so personal that you cannot find your way in, live among its stories and reboot your life."

— Chicago Tribune

"Mary Zimmerman’s beautiful and deeply humane Metamorphoses… reanimates [Ovid’s myths] with a combination of agile storytelling and enthralling stagecraft. Funny one moment, achingly sorrowful the next, Metamorphoses somehow manages both to lift you out of the moment you’re living in and speak to it with piercing directness."

— Wall Street Journal

"Writer-director Mary Zimmerman’s lovely, deeply affecting work… recaptures the primal allure of the theater… It shows that theater can provide not just escape but sometimes a glimpse of the divine."

— Time

Characters

Character
WOMAN BY THE WATER
SCIENTIST
ZEUS
THREE LAUNDERESSES
MIDAS AND HIS DAUGHTER
SILENUS
BACCHUS
CEYX, A KING
ALCYONE, HIS WIFE
HERMES
APHRODITE ERYSICHTHON AND HIS MOTHER
ORPHEUS
EURYDICE, HIS BRIDE
VERTUMNUS, GOD OF SPRINGTIME
POMONA, A WOOD NYMPH
CINYRAS, A KING
MYRRHA, HIS DAUGHTER
NURSEMAID, HER NURSE
PHAETON
THERAPIST
EROS
PSYCHE
QAND A
BAUCIS, A POOR WOMAN
PHILEMON, HER HUSBAND

Videos

Metamorphoses Trailer - Guthrie Theater

Publication

Year 2002
Binding Paperback
Edition 1st
Pages 120
Place Evanston, Ill.
Language English
ISBN-13 9780810119802
ISBN-10 0810119803
LCCN 2002002675
LCC PS3576.I66 M47 2002
DCC 812/.54

Metamorphoses is a American adaptation play written by David R Slavitt and published by Northwest University Press in Evanston, Ill. (2002).

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