Metamorphoses

by Mary Zimmerman

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."

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Mythology, Fiction, Fantasy, Classics

120 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 2002

About the author

Mary Zimmerman is an American theatre director and playwright.

Reviews

[Kate♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25/5stars

an interesting take on Ovid's "Metamorphoses" but obviously I want to SEE this play because reading it I didn't feel like I got a good idea on how Zimmerman would portray it on stage, or the tone of the play seeing as some parts were serious and sad and others were quirky and funny.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better seen than read.
Cool concept, but I need
more of a reason.

[Teddy Reitman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my absolute most favorite plays. I kept the script from when we put it on at my high school and re-reading it now I remember just how freaking good it is. She changes some of the original myths just a little though to make them less Old-Testament level scary which is kind of funny to me. But yeah, this old chestnut totally holds up.

[K.m. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've seen this play twice, both beautifully staged/designed/blocked but reading it was lackluster. Maybe I was seduced by the visuals. The most interesting parts of the reading were the descriptions of the staging and directions, that and the Orpheus and Eurydice section (which included both Ovid's and Rilke's versions of the story). Most of the modernized retellings didn't particularly add to or grow off of the original story and the narration had a tendency to fall into simplistic explanations of meaning rather than allowing you to take what you will from it. I never got a sense that it mined anything new except a bland re-hashing of Greek myths. Overall it produces great scene design, but the words were meh.

[Maximilian Lalli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Into The Woods for the Greek mythology girlies

[Paulina Rae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q:
So it has a happy ending?

A:
It has a very happy ending.

[EROS and PSYCHE approach the raft and sit on it together.]

Q:
Almost none of these stories have completely happy endings.

A:
This is different.

Q:
Why is that?

[PSYCHE and EROS kiss. And kiss again.]

A:
It’s just inevitable. The soul wanders in the dark, until it finds love. And so, wherever our love goes, there we find our soul.

Q:
It always happens?

A:
If we’re lucky. And if we let ourselves be blind.

Q:
Instead of watching out?

A:
Instead of always watching out.

***

NARRATOR ONE:
Walking down the street at night, when you’re all alone, you can still hear, stirring in the intermingled branches of the trees above, the ardent prayer of Baucis and Philemon. They whisper:

ALL:
Let me die the moment my love dies.

NARRATOR ONE:
They whisper:

ALL:
Let me not outlive my own capacity to love.

NARRATOR ONE:
They whisper:

ALL:
Let me die still loving, and so, never die.

[Ashton Showers · Rating 4 out of 5]

perfect definition of a “circular script”. i love greek mythology and this play was a really fun read. huge fan of the alcyone and ceyx scene 👏

[Tara Redd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having seen and read this play several times, I'm always torn because much of it is in a way too easy, but so much more of it is just not done justice on a piece of paper. I've come down a lot off my Mary Zimmerman obsession, but the ending is truly beautiful on stage:

Walking down the street at night, when you’re all alone, you can still hear, stirring in the intermingled branches of the trees above, the ardent prayer of Baucis and Philemon.
They whisper:
Let me die the moment my love dies.
They whisper:
Let me not outlive my own capacity to love.
They whisper:
Let me die still loving, and so, never die.

[Arun Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Myths are science.

We understand world and ourselves through stories and myths are stories that have survived the time due to some inherent truth. The science in them is just amazing. Amazing play!!

[Nathaniel Punches · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic!

[Douglas Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, funny, and poignant. A good read.

[Elianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure genius!!!! I need to pick Mary Zimmerman’s brain ASAP

[Ronnie Avansino]

I don’t know that it needed to be split like this. There were some that I loved: Alcyone and Ceyx for example or Baucis and Philemon. However there were some I strongly disliked and wished were struck (Myrrha I’m looking at you)

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

“it’s just inevitable. the soul wanders in the dark until it finds love. and so, wherever our love goes, there we find our soul” 😭 beautiful beautiful play id die to see it or direct it or be in it

[Roma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please god let me be in this play

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

not that i care about star ratings as you all know, but i do feel like i gave this an """"extra star"""" because of the necessary inadequacy of this play as a read experience. what makes this play necessary, what gives it the right to exist, is that it activates one of the most crucial aspects of ovid's metamorphoses that remains dormant as a poem—the bodies! when you get right down to it, when you want to reduce the metamorphoses in the most prosaic way possible, it's a poem about Weird Things Happening To Our Bodies; it's about how bodies can't really contain everything that happens to a human, or aren't good at describing and representing the emotional experience of being human. Or Something. so that's where a play comes in; that's where mary zimmerman comes in. finally a physical experience of the poem, bodies and all! but when you read that, when the closest you can get to the theatre's bodily movement is reading the stage directions, you're just reminded of what has to be missing from a play—the text—and what little is there of the text (and of other texts! i don't think i'd ever heard of that rilke poem about eurydice before—it was v cool) makes you want the rest. because the play has only six tales from the metamorphoses, which is skimpy and sad but obviously necessary for a play, and i still haven't really thought enough about why zimmerman chose the stories she chose (my main impulse is to say she mostly chose the well-known ones, therefore the accessible ones, for obvious reasons), but i know i really don't like the (secondary?) framing device of midas. it simplifies and strips a story about an foolish man who for the most part stays foolish and makes it more reminiscent of the sweet adaptations i read as a child—and the characterization of bacchus in the midas story is also off, too sympathetic, not godly enough, not like ovid's gods or the gods of classical literature in general. basically the worst parts of the play are when zimmerman makes the characters easier to like, easier to pretend to understand, in a way that they never are in classical literature. there's not enough ~bite~ i suppose you could say, but there sure is a lot of beauty. ovid was beautiful and ovid was also cruel (and also The Original Fuckboy, which is to say, again, terrible and cruel) and the metamorphoses, i decided to proclaim earlier today, is the poem that best served his cruelty. anyway i'd love to see this in performance. my friend (who lent me the play of course) said zimmerman is known more as a director than a playwright, and it shows—nor do i think she's trying to hide it.

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zimmerman's play watches better than it reads, though some of her poetry is indeed beautiful. Being a puppetry and movement based director, her scripts largely serve as accompaniments to her productions and reading them one is acutely aware of the lack of dialogue and character interaction, and the overwhelm of exposition. She re-tells Ovid's stories well, if perhaps not terribly interestingly, the one exception being her comparison of the traditional Orpheus myth with Rilke's re-telling of it. Afraid to let the myths stand on their own, though, she often relies on narrators to directly state the hidden meanings of the material, making her less of a playwright, in my opinion, and more like someone writing accompaniment to a planetarium show or documentary.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Metamorphoses is my all-time favorite play. Hands down. This play is beautifully composed and breathes new life into Ovid's work. Mary Zimmerman does not use all of the stories from the original, but does an excellent job of re-imagining several of the tales. As an aside, if you are ever so lucky as to see the play - please do. I was fortunate enough to see it when it was directed by Ms. Zimmerman and it was absolutely amazing. There was not a dry eye in the house. This is an incredibly touching work, and I encourage everyone to read it. I like to think of Mary Zimmerman as the Baz Lurman of theatre. Or possibly Baz Lurman is the Mary Zimmerman of film?

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really enjoyed a reminder of Ovid's tales. Human emotions never change.

[illiterate emmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I have also done a production of this so this review is a mix of someone that has had to read the show/performed it. Also note for the performance we only did: Midas, Alcyone and Ceyx, Erycthon, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Bowsis and Philemon.
Personally for me, it was better to read than for something for the stage. While reading the full play I was intrigued by a lot of the stories, each story themselves were well written, each character was intriguing and had a lot of depth to them.
For the stage it was confusing, with the exception of Orpheus and Eurydice there was no indication of what story we were on. According to some of my friends they would get confused about what was happening because it would switch from story to story really quickly.
I wish there were more of transitions into each of the stories to indicate what we were on. I feel like Midas, and Orpheus and Eurydice does that very well and those are the ones that feel the most developed probably because Zimmerman knew people know those myths the best.
Again it’s not a bad play, it’s good I would give it 2.5 if I could. For a stage show there was just a lot going on at once and you can’t really explain it to people if you tell them you’re doing this show(and they always think you’re doing the bug one). It has a lot of potential but it got too ambitious and overall just falls flat. Reading wise it’s good, stage wise not really

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of imagination and verve, and most certainly breadth. It features dozens of stories and hundreds of characters. Translating this to the stage is certainly a daunting task requiring a very selective choice of the stories and a strong theme to hold them together.

I fail to see either in Zimmerman’s play. Little seems to hold the stories together. And the story of Psyche and Eros is not in Ovid’s poem, nor does it feature a metamorphosis. (Though I guess it is mentioned at the end that Psyche is made a god.) The language mixes some poetry of Ovid (rather plainly translated by David Slavitt) with plain, colloquial speeches.

Although based upon a classic poem, it appears that this play is more spectacle and performance than poetry, using a large pool with much music and dance. Its performances appear to have been very well received.

On the page, though, it is rather tepid. It suffers from the same malady as most translations today: it’s boring. What’s interesting and weird about Ovid’s poetry is carefully dissected until we’re left with a colloquial pulp free of poetry.

[Christine Raya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Metamorphoses contains many plays relating to Greek gos such as Zeus and Eros. Each play has different theme and I always learned new techniques from them. For example, in my writing arts class, our teacher taucht us on how the conversation between two chracters seems to be realistic. When my group made a play, it did not sound normal like the play in metamorphoses. I also learned that each play contains 100s of themes. In Eros and Psyche, we listed about 30 themes in a little amount of time and there were still more possible ideas. This book will teach you a good lesson on making good plays. I will recomend this book to actors and students.

[Ruby Gibson]

can't even rate this honestly because it's such a visual/movementy/devisey play that I'm sure the script alone doesn't do it justice. that said the text is beautiful and weird. I did not know what my takeaway was supposed to be at the end, if any...? other than woahhhh they just did a play in a pool that's crazy. I think I would have much more to say if I saw it.

my favorite story depicted was cupid and psyche :) the Q&A format was cool, and I love the trope of the one happy ending in a canon of tragedies. fun fact: this myth is not found in ovid's metamorphoses, but Mary said "I love it so much I just had to put it in."

[Cyndy Maddux · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting retelling of many Greek mythological tales. I was given the play to read as a suggestion for a possible replacement for the The Odyssey with 9th graders. While I think it would be appropriate for AP seniors, it is NOT appropriate as a text for 9th graders. Many of the tales are not familiar to the casual mythology reader, and the story containing incest is something I KNOW parents of 9th graders would not appreciate.

I would like to see a production of the play performed someday.

[Feisty Harriet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history and interweaving stories of Who's Who among the Greek gods and goddesses...this play has it ALL as you follow the journey through ancient times. And there's a full-blown battle with Poseidon, god of the sea. Have you ever seen a full size water battle on stage--complete with ships and an ocean/swimming pool in the orchestra pit? I highly recommend it. If you ever have the chance to see this I hope you leap at it. And bring rain gear.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit I cried almost as much reading this play as I did when I first watched it. Zimmerman makes the mythic manageable, and her mastery of the genre combined with the play's optimism and faith in the power of love make Metamorphoses one of the most powerful and important contemporary plays I've ever seen.

[Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this play performed at KU when I was in the one theatre class I took and I was mesmerized. Reading the play held up for me but it was partially because certain scenes and phrases sent me back to how it was staged. But even without seeing the play, the prose is gorgeous and haunting in many places and it's wonderful meditation on stories, myth, and life.

[Arin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful play that reimagines some of Ovid's popular myths. Although it can be hard to picture at times when you're reading it, due to the unique staging and the large pool of water required, it is still striking, even when being read. I have never seen a production of the play but after reading the play, it is definitely on my list to keep an eye out for productions near me.

[Ken W · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this five stars because I’ve seen it performed. It’s hard, sometimes, to love a simply written play without having seen it. This play is beautiful and sparse, relying heavily on visuals. I recommend looking at photos of the productions in the end of the book before beginning to read it.

It moves quickly but is lovely in its brevity. Big Sarah Ruhl vibes.