Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Pleasance Dome
10-30 August, 12.00

As a reviewer, you know you’re watching a wonderful ensemble when you look at your notepad to see which cast members you’ve marked out as giving outstanding performances, only to find that you’ve named every single actor in the production. This vivid re-telling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is set in WWII Britain, where RP accents and rutting deities reveal that anything is possible with the can-do attitude of the blitz spirit. The piece is impeccably choreographed, with each performer taking it in turns to control the narrative or underscore it with live music as they seamlessly mutate from one story to the next.

Between them they weave together a sublime evocation of chaos and change with musical and dramatic dexterity. Constantly surprising and endlessly inventive, Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a theatrical delight which rewrites the possibilities of literary adaptation with outstanding success. I challenge anyone not to be enchanted by this production: such a spellbinding spectacle deserves to be sincerely applauded.

- Miranda Fay Thomas