It can be a struggle for young actors to take on the Greeks without coming across like they are playing dress-up. The outsized parts - Zeus, Hades, Aphrodite - are difficult to fill and make actors who come up short look even smaller than they are. The school play vibe of COLLAB's production of Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of the Greek myths told in Ovid's Metamorphoses - Orpheus and Eurydice, etc. - is made worse by a script that is over-earnest and trying much too hard to impress.
Thankfully, Tina Sergeant's direction is confident and clever and is the rising tide that lifts all the boats. This nautical allusion is intentional because one of the strongest impressions I left the show with was the playful and evocative use of water, the wading pool specially constructed within the Substation Theatre for this production being extremely well-used (front row audiences, expect to get a little wet!).
For a play called Metamorphoses which deals with supernatural themes, however, it is most apt that the production (COLLAB's first) undergoes a mystical transformation of its own. The first hour makes for pretty dull if painless viewing but persevere because in the last third of the play, everything suddenly, magically ... clicks. This second wind starts off with a hilarious take on the Narcissus myth and never lets up from there, allowing Metamorphoses to realise its promise and take flight. The stories begin to play more to the cast's strength in comedy and their shared theme of enduring love also gathers steam. In fact, where the first hour left me sporadically checking my watch, by the time the chorus gathers to whisper the closing lines of the play, I was choking back tears!