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review You heard right: pool party with the Gods, 2nd & Grand. Hey, I’m in. Who wouldn’t be? And when you get to the Mark Taper Forum and lay eyes on director-playwright Mary Zimmerman’s "Metamorphoses", you sense something divine going on. This playful, wise and happily contemporary adaptation of Ovid is a breathtaking wonder, by turns intellectual and gleeful across 90 delightful minutes. Mary Zimmerman is perhaps the star student of Chicago’s noted Lookinglass Theatre Company (David Schwimmer is also an alumnus). She’s one of the most exciting directors in America, an adapter of grand myths and epics without a hint of ponderousness. Here she has ten actors recast the tales of Ovid around a foot-deep pool, perfectly signifying the illusion, transformation and erotic lure of myth. Angelenos looking for an heir to Peter Brook will shit themselves with pleasure at this show –- hell, anyone would. But it’s not Brook who Zimmerman cites as her big influence. She learned her dreamscapes from the brilliant Chi-town director Frank Galati, and she also credits Pina Bausch, the wonderful German choreographer whose amazing Tanztheater Wuppertal offers a similar blend of whimsy and emotional power. (It’s Bausch, in fact, that this show reminds me of most.) Some of Zimmerman’s tableaux are truly stunning. As Ceyx (Erik Lochtfeld) leaves Alycon (Louise Lamson) for a fateful adventure on the sea, one actor lowers a toy replica ship and three others row like mad as demigods come to wrestle in the pool. As Orpheus (Lochtfeld again) crosses the River Styx in search of Eurydice, we hear the opening chords of "Stairway to Heaven" followed by a car alarm and "Chopsticks". Seconds later, he recites an ode to his beloved under a 50-foot cascade of water from the Taper’s roof, the cleansing power of the gods showering and protecting him from the fire of the surrounding Underworld. Spoiled rich kid Phaeton (Doug Hara) floats in yellow swim trunks and RayBans, telling his analyst (Lisa Tejero) about the disastrous day he asked for the keys to his dad’s car. Big mistake. "I was flying too low, and I got to going way too fast, and I set the world on fire," he admits. While Phaeton is rather chatty, the story of Narcissus takes three short, wordless minutes. This is director’s theatre, and vital theatre. Everybody who walks into a theatre space – whether actor, director, playwright or ticketbuyer – eventually asks the same question: "What is possible?" The question is unspoken, but always there. If you answer the question, you limit the possibilities. To be consistently amazed and inspired by the question, you must refrain from fixed answers and swim in constant dreams. So swims Zimmerman, along with her fine cast. And we should all jump into their liberating, reflective pool. "Metamorphoses",
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