Cheri Magid’s intelligent play provides a fine showcase for Sarah Baskin’s considerable acting skills. The culture in which Ovid’s Metamorphosis was written (about 8CE, retelling older Greek and Roman myths) probably didn’t perceive sexual assault in the same way we do now, and certainly the language is different. When Mara, a student, questions her professor about this, he gets into a thoroughly modern tangle. They both then follow a poetically imagined but fast-paced journey through some of Ovid’s transformations, interspersed with Mara’s own personal experiences. There’s an elegiac ending which shows that perhaps both have learned from the experience, though equally, that the abuse of power is as widely spread in its origin and nature as it ever was.

Assembly Rooms, until 24 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Alan Cranston]