DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended
"...The first thing you notice of course is the pool: you can smell it before you go in; you can feel the water in the air. Ten yards by twenty yards maybe. The bottom and the sides are black, so it's hard to judge depth, but there's a chair at one end and only a few inches of its legs appear to be underwater. The pool (created by Scenic Designer Daniel Ostling) framed by a deck of planks, fills the entire playing space, and the Fichandler's four sections of seats flare up and out from the deck like the sides of a hopper. It would be a good place for a boxing match."
Baltimore Sun - Highly Recommended
"...Zimmerman, using David Slavitt’s translation of Ovid’s text, has fashioned a seamless flow of colorfully detailed scenes that form a journey from folly to wisdom, selfishness to selflessness. That journey is meant to take place in and around a giant pool of water. This production, directed by the playwright and beautifully designed by Daniel Ostling, emphatically and brilliantly embraces that element."
MetroWeekly - Highly Recommended
"...Metamorphoses runs for roughly 90 minutes without intermission. You'll be happy they opted not to interrupt the magic halfway through, but chances are you'd be content with it going longer. And if you're anything like me, you'll leave with a fervent wish that Zimmerman and Arena team up again, and soon."
Washington City Paper - Highly Recommended
"...That last tale-ending with a gorgeous bit of stagecraft that marries fire and water and proves again the power of the simple physical gesture in a world where expensive effects too often leave us yawning-is just the capstone of a production that distills more than a decade of experimentation with lyrical storytelling. Zimmerman and her cast, some of whom created their characters back in the day, deploy humor and heart in equal measures, framing timeless tales of love and loss and learning with a humanity that touches on the divine."
Washingtonian - Highly Recommended
".. To describe Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses as a splashy production is almost irresistible—it’s hard to think of a show in history that’s doused its audience so enthusiastically—but the pun does a disservice to a profoundly moving, nuanced piece of theater. From the way lighting designer T.J. Gerckens creates the illusion of King Midas’s feet turning the stage beneath him to gold to the smell of incense that wafts across the theater in a later scene, Zimmerman has created a theatrical experience that’s both sensory and visceral, combining humor, pathos, and the inevitability of the unknown in one enormously powerful work."
ShowBizRadio - Recommended
"...In some moments, Arena Stage’s large, shallow, rectangular pool — reportedly the largest used in any production of the show — is used to striking effect. Phaeton (Doug Hara) takes to his yellow air mattress, alone in the pool in his neurotic and egocentric splendor, providing the funniest moment of the evening. The youthful Myrrha (Ashleigh Lathrop), inconsolably ashamed for having initiated, at Aphrodite’s instance, a passionately lustful sexual encounter with her father (Chris Kipiniak), dissolves into tears and then fades into the darkening water in one corner of the pool. At the end of the show, following the transformation of aged lovers Baucis and Philemon (Tempe Thomas and Doug Hara) into entwined trees, the entire cast is immersed together for the first time, among floating candles, which they extinguish for the final blackout. The effect is nothing short of gorgeous."
The Georgetowner - Highly Recommended
".. “Metamorphoses,” Zimmerman’s astonishing and remarkably durable version of the 2,000-year-old "Metamorphoses" by the Roman poet Ovid (based on David Slavitt’s translation) at Arena Stage, set in a raging, slithering, slappy-sloppy giant water- and emotion-filled pool, you might not ever use that phrase again."
MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
".. I’m not one to go into some deep psychological analysis of what this show means. I leave that to people that actually know what they are talking about. My job is to tell you why you should see this show, and there are several reasons."
DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended
The water drew me in. The performance kept me there. And now the indelible images flood my memory as I replay the scenes of men and women being at one with the water, floating age-old stories into the air and back again.
If you believe in theatrical magic, Metamorphoses is transfiguration - where objects, time and space dissolve in a whisper and water is used for conjuring. This is theatre that is mythic, modern, playful and wonderful.
