A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  T ina Muñoz Pandya, Lauren Molina, Monica West, Russell Mernagh, and Billy Rude in The Matchbox Magic Flute . Photo by Liz Lauren. Full disclosure: I have very limited experience as an opera-goer and my knowledge of Mozart is mostly confined to Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, Amadeus , and its 1984 film version. Although the performances of both were especially memorable, the details, unfortunately, were not. Mary Zimmerman is certainly having a “DC Moment,” with this play, which she adapted and directed, at the Shakespeare Theatre Company following the Folger’s staging of her Metamorphoses . Both productions continue through June 16. In addition, Zimmerman created The Notebooks of Leonardo daVinci , which STC presented in 2022. A program note lets us know that the “matchbox” in the title refers to those tiny cars on a scale of 1:64. Zimmerman considers this a “miniaturization,” what I see as a kind of “opera-lite” or an abridgement as in Reader’s Digest versions of novels that I...

  The Water Nymph (played by Miss Kitty) introduces us to the mythical tales of Ovid in Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses , on stage at the Folger Theatre, May 7-June 16. Photo by Brittany Diliberto.  Storytelling pre-dates language, back to the days when primitive men drew pictures on the walls of caves or “acted” physically in order to share their “ stories” with others. Every civilization has had some form of storytelling. Before the written word, stories were shared orally. Sharing experiences is one purpose of storytelling, but there are many more: storytelling passes on history, tradition, customs, and morals; it is used to teach and attempt to explain the unexplained. Whether we call them myths or folk tales or fairy tales, storytelling is universal. Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses , based on the myths of the Roman poet Ovid from the translation by David R. Slavitt, collects many (but by no means all) of Ovid’s tales from his masterwork of the same title, dated from the...