Tales from Ovid

Silky perversity in Tales from Ovid. Photo by Jenni Wylie.

I think what's most remarkable about the ArtsEmerson production of Whistler in the Dark's Tales from Ovid (through this weekend only) is that it has happened at all.  That the production has retained most of its intensity and muscular poetry in its new setting is just an added bonus - the real news is that the powers that be have actually deigned to notice a fringe troupe, and have elevated it to what counts as the local "big time."  Which frankly counts as a watershed.

To be fair, similar opportunities have opened up for Boston writers, like Melinda Lopez and Kirsten Greenidge, who have both won full productions at the Huntington.  But now another wall in Boston's cultural compartmentalization - which only reflects the way the pillars of our community generally face New York - has at last fallen, thanks to Bob Orchard's willingness to take a risk on the city's artists in a way none of his predecessors or current peers has been willing to do.

Of course I've long identified, and been identified, with Whistler - I was the first critic to notice them, years ago when I wrote for the Globe, when I raved over what I later learned was their very first show (the great Howard Barker's The Possibilities).  And I've followed them since (sometimes to theatres where I was the only audience member, and they put on the show just for me). And of course I banged the drum loudly for Tales from Ovid two years ago, so I couldn't agree more with Mr. Orchard's decision to program it - and it's also nice to see the production counts as one of the best productions at ArtsEmerson so far this season; the local kids have indeed made good.

Although (as always at the Hub Review) a few caveats do apply.  Director Meg Taintor's vision is perhaps not quite as gripping this time around as it was in its original, grittier incarnation at the Factory Theatre.  There was something about the sheer verticality of that rough space (much of the show occurs overhead, on silks) that gave the show's aerial stunts a visceral punch that's somehow lacking here (don't worry, though, those of you who dig physical danger - the Whistlers do seem to be risking their necks).

And Taintor has understandably wanted to flesh out her production with additional tales from her source - but the very leanness of the pithy original (which was all muscle) likewise gave it a startling charge that it takes longer for the performers to generate here.  Don't worry, they do - the production becomes more and more absorbing as it proceeds; and all the "greatest hits" of the original return - ingenious imagery that includes Arachne weaving a web above our heads, Narcissus encountering his own reflection dangling upside-down, Actaeon sprouting antlers before our horrified eyes, and Phaëton falling headlong from the chariot of the sun.

Yeah, it's good stuff - raw and smart and bracing, the way all the best Whistler shows are.  Although, just btw, it's almost nothing like Ovid - the tone is all Ted Hughes, the British poet laureate who is perhaps most famous as the betrayer of Sylvia Plath, and who "translated" the urbanely balanced Latin original into his own wounded, masculine idiom - which to be fair may be closer to the earlier Greek - where calm cruelty and terrible transformation are the order of the day.  (Even when one of these stories does end sweetly, like Atalanta's, Hughes is careful to add a grotesque epilogue.)

But you know what?  Pain makes great theatre.  Still, be warned: the Whistlers set about this savagery with such deadpan alacrity that you may be somewhat taken aback by their ruthlessness.  People looked stunned when poor Philomele's tongue was torn from her mouth, or when Actaeon was ripped to shreds by his own hounds (or when incest suddenly loomed);  somehow the Whistlers have a way of conveying these traumas with a force that's all the more potent for being entirely poetic.

Too bad they still don't quite convey the vocal poetry of either Ovid or Hughes - my biggest complaint about the first version was the voice work - and here, clearly only Danny Bryck has had the training to convey the beauty of his lines (without tipping over into grandiosity).  Happily, the musical accompaniment has been expanded, and improved, greatly - Shaw Pong Liu's violin (and other percussive effects) are now beautifully integrated into the action.

Of course the poetry is still there - it's just visual now.  It still has the power to imprint your memory, though.  I'll never forget Bryck's desperate death as Actaeon, or Aimee Rose Ranger's delightfully cool Atalanta, or the eagerness of Mac Young's Phaëton as he hauled his way up to the sun, hand over hand, or the deadly calm of Jen O'Connor's perversity as Myrrha.  These actors are all operating brilliantly, and on the edge of palpable physical risk (much of the performance is like a dance, in fact - only a dance in which if you put one foot wrong, you could fall ten feet).  That risk parallels the Whistlers' artistic wager with this production, which has paid off in a way which I can only hope will at last open a door to a wider audience for other talents on Boston's fringe.

Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid

The current season has been crowded with events - Fräulein Maria, the Annie Baker Festival, Basil Twist - but something on the fringe may just steal the thunder from all these heavy hitters and turn out to be "the" show to have seen in 2010, the one people will still be talking about for years to come.

It's Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid, from the ever-intrepid Whistler in the Dark.  This tiny troupe has taken over the rough, unvarnished space of the Factory Theatre and transformed it into a kind of flying circus of the most evocative kind.  For just as Mary Zimmerman chose water as the basis of her famous adaptation of Metamorphoses, Whistler director Meg Taintor has turned to air for her version of Ted Hughes' rawly lyrical translation.  And with the simplest of means - two long skeins of shimmering silk suspended from the high rafters of the Factory space - she and her cast wreak a small, yet mysterious, miracle unlike anything I think Boston's fringe has ever seen.

But first, back to Ted Hughes.  And his version of Ovid (which some might argue isn't really Ovid).  The talented, and of course notorious (due to his infidelities leading, to some extent, to the suicide of his wife, Sylvia Plath) British poet has delivered a "translation" of a sample of the Metamorphoses that all but yanks Ovid into his own poetic domain.  While the Roman was known for urbanity and sophistication, Hughes is at his best when conjuring the rough magic of the natural world, as you can see in these lines from an early poem, "Hawk Roosting:"

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads.

These are not the rippling hexameters of Ovid - and what's more, Hughes is not all that interested in the Roman poet's theme of metamorphosis as the metaphysic of love, operating as a kind of cosmic principle.  Instead Hughes is obsessed with passion, both high and low, as a driver of transformation.  What hooks Hughes in Ovid is his repeated trope of ecstasy pushing people over the human/animal edge - or right through death into painful, but eternal, transfiguration.  That's not enough to encapsulate Ovid, but it's enough to provide a compelling evening of theatre, and the metamorphosis of the great Roman's masterwork into Hughes' natural tongue invigorates its verse with a compelling animal magic.  The resulting text, though it's so episodic it never achieves an arc, is always sexily gripping - at times even perversely so.

And what a brilliant stroke it was to take all this to the air!  The Whistlers - Erin Brehm, Danny Bryck, Jen O'Connor, Aimee Rose Ranger and Mac Young - are fearless (there's no net), and though I suppose the aerial tricks they play are basic ones, up close and personal they're tremendously impressive - as well as intensely evocative.  Indeed, director Taintor has been ceaselessly inventive in her imagery - from Narcissus's upside-down reflection, to Ariadne hanging from her own web, to Phaëton's fall from heaven - and from those simple strips of silk she conjures all manner of flowing, metamorphosing scenery (from sunlit forests to moonlit tents, above). And there are also individual performances to savor here, from Brehm's porcelain Atalanta to O'Connor's coldly determined Myrrha, to Bryck's terror-stricken Actaeon and Young's brash Phaëton. Alas, there's at least one gap in the production - its vocals; the Whistlers have adequate voices, but no great ones, and no one does full justice to the Hughes text. And while David McMullen's soundscape was always appropriate, I found myself often wishing for something closer to a through-composed score.

Indeed, what one walks away from Tales from Ovid thinking is, "This production deserves a longer, larger life!" Powerful as it is, one can only imagine what the Whistlers could do with more time and space, a full score, some projections - you name it. How wonderful, in the end, could such a metamorphosis become? I've no idea - but are you listening, Mass. Cultural Council, or ArtsEmerson, or the Boston Foundation, or any group searching for a local production to take to the next level - one that could eventually represent Boston nationally, or even internationally? Well, the search is over. This is it.