Interviews

Brief Encounter With … Ovid’s Metamorphoses‘s Pants On Fire

Winner of the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award and the WhatsOnStage.com Editor’s Prize, Pants on
Fire present ancient myths like no on else. Setting Ovid’s Metamorphoses in WWII Britain, it transforms
the epic tales into an actor-musician extravaganza.


Who is Pants On Fire?

A dynamic physical theatre actor-musician company based in London. Founded by Peter Bramley, Pants

On Fire burst back onto the scene at the Fringe 2010 where we received many 5 star reviews and was

awarded the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh, arguably the highest accolade of the festival for our show

Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Mabel Jones is Co-Artistic Director and the cast are core Company Members. All

came together to devise the show, which was written and directed by Lacoque-trained Peter Bramley.

Samuel Wyer, whose work with Les Enfants Terribles is well known and revered at the Fringe and

beyond, is Company Designer.

Pants On Fire creates beautiful, innovative and exciting retellings of classical stories. Our form

embraces a magical low-tech style of theatre making; we are gifted at the art of irreverent

transformation. We will make you laugh and make you cry. And we will tell you tales with such

sublime slickness and seamless ensemble that you’ll be left, at times, gasping for breath.

What has life been like after the fringe 2010?

Pants return to the Fringe for one week only following an extensive UK tour and Off-Broadway run of

Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Work is underway on our next epic classical reimagining and workshops are

planned for Spring 2012. Cupid played a starring role in Tankus The Henge’s new music video and the

company is currently exploring working with film as a new medium!

So why do it?

Pants on Fire’s message is that; the simplest tools can tell the most elaborate stories.Theatre and

Classics are not exclusive arts, but are there to thrill and inspire. The show Ovid’s Metamorphoses

changes the context of the original stories to one not so far from now, but seemingly a world away, to

show how these stories are at the heart of human experience, and always will be no matter how much

the world changes.

Why can’t you live without seeing this show?

Ovid’s Metamorphoses embraces so many glorious theatrical art forms that it captivates and thrills the

senses. There is puppetry, physical theatre, clowning, live actor-musicianship, magical stagecraft, songs,

multimedia, mask, dance and a 90 year-old gramophone. The set is simple but enchantingly

transformative, the stories funny and poignant, the performers astoundingly versatile. And all this is

whisked into a sexy and spellbinding vintage time capsule; the terrifying but heroic world of WW2

Britain!

Ovid’s Metamorphoses can be seen from 19-29 August at 12.15 at the Pleasance Dome.