Metamorphoses

Jericho Arts Centre to September 28, 2025

Tickets from $32 ($15 students with ID) at 604-224-8007 or www.unitedplayers.com

Posted September 6, 2025

It’s safe to say most of us have never read Ovid’s epic poem The Metamorphoses which, according to Wikipedia has a “mythico-historical framework comprising over 250 myths, 15 books, and 11,995 lines” composed in “dactylic hexameter, the meter of both the ancient Iliad and Odyssey”. And, of course, back in 8 CE Rome it was written in Latin.

Here, in this United Players production of Mary Zimmerman’s 1988 play, Metamorphoses, “based on the myths of Ovid”, the poetry is gone and the language is contemporized (including “blah, blah, blah”) , witty and completely accessible.

Now imagine a trio of emerging directors – Larisse Campbell, Seamus Fera and Chris Lam – turned loose on Zimmerman’s play and imagine an ensemble of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young actors (excepting Nick Rempel, an Equity professional and a little longer in the tooth), hurling themselves with gusto into this lusty, often sexy, material. Add to the mix a creative design team that transforms the Jericho Arts Centre stage into two worlds – the world above of the gods and the world below of mortals: a high platform backgrounded by a huge painted sky, and lower down, a multi-function long dining table. There’s so much creativity going on here, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Zimmerman focusses on nine myths beginning with Midas who tells us, “Money is a good thing” earned by “hard work” but who happily accepts a gift from the gods: everything he touches will turn to gold. In a surprising bit of theatrical magic we see where that gets him.

Less well-known is the story of Alcyone who, upon the death at sea of her loving husband Ceyx, goes into endless mourning. This story gives the company an opportunity to flex its innovative muscles: the dining table becomes a boat, rowed by wooden chair-wielding ‘oarsmen’ and the white tablecloth becomes a raging sea of whitecaps.

The play moves through the myths, at every turn employing technical ingenuity, music (by composer/sound designer Hannah Patrice) and sheer ensemble exuberance. Narcissus makes the briefest appearance in the cheekiest fashion – and I loved it: with no reflecting pool at the company’s disposal, Narcissus ‘sees’ himself in a tin watering can – posing and posturing, beaming admiringly at his own beauty.

Myths ultimately are metaphors for human behaviour or, as the play states, “Myths are public dreams” that try to explain the irrational, the ambiguous. How else – other than to blame it on Eros – to understand how Myrrha falls wildly in lust with her father Cinyras? The coupling is carefully, tastefully executed but leaves little to the imagination. (Ovid was eventually exiled by Emperor Augustus, possibly for what the ruler may have seen as the poet’s morally subversive writing.)

The who’s who in Metamorphoses is difficult to follow. I did not realize until I sat down to review the play, that the glossary, tucked into the program, follows the order of the episodes. That being said, I encourage you to simply sit back – in the new, very comfortable seats – and let it all flow. The characters’ names might be bewildering but their stories are completely clear and Joelle Wyminga’s costumes are ingeniously transformative: a pair of feathered wings, a skirt of flowers, an added shawl or yards and yards of red satin so you are always aware that the characters are changing from episode to episode.

A true ensemble piece, everyone is onstage almost throughout the full ninety minutes: Luke Atkinson, Blake Buksa, Hazel Kang, Sarah Kelen, Dale MacDonald, Hannah Mitchell, Talia Peck, Nick Rempel, Lucy Sharples and Carson Walliser.

While Ovid’s original is, obviously, about metamorphoses – mortals becoming gods, mortals turned into trees and birds – Zimmerman’s play is more about love: the perils of love, the raptures of love, the joy of enduring love. “Let us die at the same moment”, is the wish granted to Baucis and Philemon by Zeus in return for their charity and so, according to myth, they live on as the oak and the linden. Metamorphoses ends with a fervent hope that our capacity for love never dies.

Metamorphoses is an ancient poem given new life by a trio of emerging directors, highly creative designers and a fresh young cast. Ovid without the dust of the ages.