Mary Zimmerman is a master at the art of mesmerism. Lit by astonishing feats of visual alchemy, her meditative body of work floats through the imagination like a soft reverie.
In the Tony-winning “Metamorphoses,” sailing back into Berkeley Repertory Theatre after 20 years, the director once again beguiles the eye with her luminous stage poetry, slowly seducing us into seeking our own reflections in this ancient fable, just as the characters stare into the onstage pool of water.
Zimmerman dives into the myths of Ovid with her signature blend of the cerebral and the childlike, immersing us in crystalline tableaux and primal wonder. The gorgeous and graceful revival runs through March 10 at Berkeley Rep in a co-production with the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.
Water is Zimmerman’s muse here. It’s a receptacle for a 100-minute theatrical ritual that flows from the famous to the forgotten, swirling through elliptical waves of transformation. The characters splash through the water as reality washes away and we forget the boundaries between past and present, symbolic and literal. Daniel Ostling’s elegant set design frames and amplifies the protean qualities of this element of nature.
A sparkling chandelier becomes the stars in this fanciful universe. Lives are dashed on the rocks of loss, ships are torn asunder by savage seas, a family falls into incest and yet the will to heal endures.
A woman (Louise Lamson) throws herself into the waves pining her lost love (Alex Moggridge) only to find her pain transmuted into freedom. With a flicker of light, she and her dead husband turn into shorebirds and fly away, their arms dancing through the air like wings.
Some of the myths are iconic, others obscure. Haunted by greed, King Midas (Raymond Fox) turns his child (Sango Tajima) into gold. Wracked with doubt, Orpheus (Moggridge) cannot resist the impulse to turn back and look at his beloved Eurydice (Suzy Weller), abandoning her to the underworld forever.
Not all of the narratives cut as close to the bone as they should and it’s hard not to miss the shattering emotional ferocity of Zimmerman’s “The White Snake” or the dazzling whimsy of her “Journey to the West.” Some of the actors are more deft at narrating the transitions from tragedy to scholarship than others.
Still there are many exquisitely crafted moments when the text and the staging buoy each other beautifully. Felicity Jones Latta channels the majesty of the goddess Aphrodite with her crisp and penetrating elocution. Rodney Gardiner gets the biggest laugh of the night as the wayward son of Apollo, going for a joyride with his dad’s wheels. Lounging on a bright yellow pool floatie, decked out in board shorts and shades, he comically bemoans his misbegotten lot in life to his shrink. Steven Epp, best known for his work with the Theatre de la Jeune Lune, captures the hideous zeal of a glutton eating himself to death.
Zimmerman’s adaptation is sparse enough to be poetry, radiant shards of conversations that illuminate the enigma of being mortal in a chaotic universe that may as well be ruled by fickle gods. There also pools of quiet in this beguiling show. Be assured that the director plants depth charges of meaning in her deep wells of silence. In those moments of quiet, a mystery unfurls. It’s then we plunder our own psyches to chart our place in the fables.
The intimacy of those discoveries is what gilds “Metamorphoses” with its primal power. We may not always hear their echoes clearly but the ancient myths pound in our imaginations still.
‘METAMORPHOSES’
Written and directed by Mary Zimmerman, based on the myths of Ovid, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Through: March 10
Where: Berkeley Rep’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley
Running time: 100 minutes, no intermission
Details: $40-$115; 510-647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org