THEATRE REVIEW

SEPTEMBER 2025 | Volume 255

 

United Players opens its season with a show I haven’t seen staged here since 2008, Mary Zimmerman’s adaptation of a number of myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In an innovative twist UP’s artistic director, Sarah Rodgers, has assigned directorial duties to three emerging directors: Larisse Campbell, Seamus Fera and Christopher Lam.

The dramatized myths are somewhat grim cautionary tales, mitigated by the gods transforming various mortals into trees and birds, though the play ends with a couple of upbeat stories. But the most upbeat story of all is the terrific work done by the mostly young cast, their directors and designers.

Nothing in the program or performance indicateswho directed what segments of the show,and the overall style is so homogeneous that you wouldn’t know that a single intelligence wasn’t behind the whole thing. Gods, goddesses and mortals are played by different actors without regard to gender. Cast members narrate each segment, which revolves around a long rectangular table (in place of the swimming pool indicated in the script) on Charles Beaver’s cleverly simple set.The table, on wheels, is easily moved or rotated by actors, and chairs are used as steps to mount and dismount the table. Actors hold up sheets when the table becomes a sailing ship. There is also an upper-level balcony on which gods appear.

The show begins in a somewhat mannered fashion with the story of Midas (Luke Atkinson), but its ending, when Midas inadvertently turns his daughter (Hazel Kang) into gold, is a tour de force of lighting (Sam Cheng) and costume (Joelle Wyminga) that propels the production on its way. Hannah Patrice’s sound design is another very effective element in many of the scenes.

When in the moving story of Alcyone (Talia Peck) and Ceyx (Hannah Mitchell) King Ceyx drowns at sea, his Queen Alcyone mourns him so deeply that the god of sleep has him visit her and they are eventually turned into birds.

Two of the best sequences feature Sarah Kelen and Dale MacDonald. When King Erysichthon (MacDonald) cuts down a grove of trees sacred to Ceres, the goddess sends Hunger (Kelen) to torment him. Kelen plays Hunger as a fantastically wild woman whose violent dance with the King drives him to sell his own mother for food and ultimately consume his own body.

Kelen also plays a young wood nymph driven to madness by Aphrodite when she rejects the love of the god of springtime. The goddess of love makes her fall in love with and seduce her own father (MacDonald), who is forbidden to see her. But when he does … yikes. Another very powerful, beautiful and terrible myth.

My other favourite segment is the story of the sun god Apollo (Blake Buksa) and his ambitious but rash son Phaëton (Nick Rempel), who will accidentally destroy himself and set the world on fire. Buksa has a beautiful voice and simultaneously sings a version of each line spoken by the scene’s narrator. I suspect that that clever device is the director’s rather than the playwright’s.

I haven’t mentioned the other two actors, Lucy Sharples and Carson Walliser, only because the ensemble nature of the show makes it difficult to identify every actor in every scene. Additional scenes involve Orpheus, Eurydice and Persephone, Eros and Psyche, Zeus and Hera, Baucis and Philemon. All are dynamic and entertaining, and there are no weaknesses in the cast.

Kudos to United Players (not just because I performed with them last season) for giving these young actors, directors and designers such rich material to play with, and for continuing to give its audiences imaginative, high-caliber theatre.

 

 

 

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