TALES FROM OVID:

Burton Taylor Theatre to Saturday 20th.

Ted Hughes' acclaimed rendering of Ovid's Metamorphoses is being performed this week in the late slot at the BT, and what a gem it turns out to be. It is hard at first to imagine how a small company of actors could translate the fantastical mythology of the tales onto a small stage with an equally sized budget. But the imagination and talent for innovation of directors, Jane Houston and Laura Santana, ensure that the piece really comes to life. The actors merge into scenery and characters emerge out of the mass only to be reintegrated, suggesting the origins of Greek myth as communal and ritual catharsis long before Ovid got his hands on it.

The production chooses to emphasise the dreamscape effect of Ovid's verse rather than its more irksome self-consciousness.Most importantly it explores a sinister nightmare interpretation of the text, which is not always immediately apparent to the reader and thus brings out the profound fears of and perverse attraction to sexual ambiguity and violence, incest, greed and pride shared by all people, which the mythological metamorphoses exemplify.

This effect is achieved by paying close attention to the visual and aural impact of the actors who fill out the background to the scenes with extraordinary imagination. An actor plays Narcissus reflection, others the posts of Tereus' bed, the fulcrums around which Arachne weaves her web. Innovative and perpetually varying use of props, sounds and physical movement please the eye, while the music of Hughes's verse occupies the ears: an intoxicating brew, which easily avoids any danger of appearing ridiculous. All in all a remarkably impressive production of a great adaptation of a classic text.

James Macinnes 16/10/01