The Berkeley Rep's 'Metamorphoses' Turns Ovid Into A Church Mouse

I guess as experiences go watching actors play in water is far from the worst thing that could happen in a theater, though after watching Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses for the second time in twenty years it’s also far from the best. The standard reaction has been to rave about the water on the way to raving about the show.

Here are a few examples from some recent reviews—“water is the medium and the message of this 100-minute dream”; “wade a further step into her [Zimmerman’s] pool of wonders”; “water is Zimmerman’s muse.” Every once and a while a critic (Ben Brantley’s 2002 New York Times review or Steve Winn’s 1999 San Francisco Chronicle one) will offer some light criticisms of the script, but no one seems much bothered by the actual content, which is lucky for the show though not for our souls.

And to be honest I love water and lights, but as theater goes we should demand more than dreamy production shots. Sets are secondary effects and the large regional theaters often use them as a hammer against criticism, a way of signaling seriousness and art where none exists. But since you’re going to buy some tickets to Metamorphoses anyway, let me pose a couple of questions for you to think about as you drift in and out of sleep.

If you just read the script, would you have said to yourself—“Water, everything must be played in water!”—? I think you would have probably thought that it was true for the second of the six or so tales here, but that none of the others is especially watery. It is true that tumbling over in grief is more dramatic in a pool than not, or having a temper tantrum and splashing the first three rows of the audience is marginally funnier than doing the same on a dry stage, but as a go-to move it takes on a wearying, limited appeal. Just ask the birds: when everyone flies, it’s not that big a thrill.

And since we’re on the subject of the script, it feels like it was written by the youth minister of a progressive church in Marin—full of easy, ironic lessons; scores of opportunities for the type of peppy acting natural to privileged teens; and best of all, constant narration, so that no one in the congregation gets lost: “Wake up, Grandma, Dionysus is passing out the wine.”

You might ask yourself what this would feel like with every line cut, say as a water ballet with synchronized swimmers. Well then, we might have to confront the eeriness of these ancient fables, feel the scope of their power without being told, like children, how to respond.

I can’t write much more about this. It’s soul crushing. Close your eyes and pretend that I quoted some lines from the script and patiently demonstrated how bad the writing is. Now let’s get to the end where in one last flourish I use the production as an example of late Capitalism’s ability to put the masses to sleep while giving them culture points. Now open your eyes and never be fooled again.

Zimmerman trashes Ovid with the same tenacity that Shakespeare in Love does to Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, turning the ghost of real art into a pretty looking meal for haute bourgeois hicks. But what else would we expect of the Berkeley Rep, a theater that’s been aiming down for at least seven years and possibly a decade. Paying for these tickets is to feel the waste of contemporary capitalism, where everything is pre-packaged, even wild desire.

What you get with Metamorphoses is the façade of art, pretty and beguiling on the outside, but as an experience utterly disposable. As it unfolds before you, production photo by production photo, know that every last moment of it is designed to shock and awe you into not caring, to sitting back in your chair and embracing the willful madness of experiencing nothing. That’s really not something we should be clapping for.

‘Metamorphoses’ runs through March 30 at the Alfree Peet’s Theater in Berkeley. For tickets and information click here.