Theater: Gods in the Wading Pool

Mary Zimmerman draws from the myths of Ovid to create entrancing theater--and an unlikely hit

King Midas is a preening billionaire in a business suit who has no patience for his playful daughter ("Take it inside!" he barks) until he accidentally turns her into a solid-gold accessory. Phaeton, sporting sunglasses and yellow swimming trunks, relaxes on a raft as he confides to a therapist his troubled relationship with his father, who happens to be the Sun. Myrrha, a girl so infected by the goddess of love that she commits incest with her father, gets her comeuppance by literally melting away--her body sinking out of sight, into the pool of water that takes up most of the...

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