Modern Ovid a change from the tragic to the comic
The "Metamorphosis," Ovid's story-bag of shiftings -- usually about people turning into trees and other assorted foliage -- could never be produced in full. With a hundred tales that span over 15 books (in dactylic hexameter!), any director should have to drop such stories as Orpheus and his lyre, Pygmalion and his lovely statue, and Leda the Swan. The most recent production of Ovid's work, by Northern Stage in White River Junction, however, does not drop the most important part: the beach party. Just as the theme of "Metamorphosis" is change, it is also water, that most polymorphic of substances.
