George and I went to see Pants on Fire’s WWII interpretation of Roman Poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
The play told Ovid’s epic tales using 1940’s style and original swing music. It was inspiring to see the inventive staging of four partitions being creatively recycled into a multitude of different sets and stage illusions. Very much in the spirit of Ovid’s profound statement “Nature is always engaged in acts of renewal, creating new forms everywhere out of the old ones”.
There was also some marvellous puppetry too, I was particularly fond of Eros in the form of a naughty school boy puppet. The original music was gorgeous and original, they had beautiful costumes, creatively using wartime clothing and paraphernalia to invoke forms and transformations.
Both funny and serious the play pushed the message of caring for nature and our environment without being smug or preachy. A truly contemporary message from two millennia old literature! We thoroughly enjoyed it and raved on about it to each other for the rest of the evening!
