Lighting drives play at UNM

Today, the UNM Department of Theatre and Dance presents its last performance of Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses” at its Experimental Theatre.

Zimmerman’s play is a modern take on selected myths from Ovid’s influential poem written in Rome during the first decade of the Common Era. The play is imaginatively staged and directed by theatre professor Joe Alberti, who involves scores of students in all aspects of the production.

Seldom do I begin a review with a discussion of lighting, but Michael Hidalgo’s unconventional lighting design drives the play forward and connects the various tales. Upstage is a large rear projection screen – at times awash with color or – most effectively – backlit to project shadows of characters interacting. For variety, gobos are used to cast patterns of color on the stage and set.

In front of the multi-purposed screen, scenic designer Gordon Kennedy has placed a low stone block wall with a round pool at its center. The pool contains water that also reflects light. The rest of the action takes place on the bare stage floor and on the elevated catwalk that rings the theater. Characters and their silhouettes merge.

The cast is 16 female students playing about 50 roles of both genders. Following Ovid, the playwright uses narrators to tell the stories as they are acted out. “Metamorphoses” means transformations or changes, and most of the myths involve transmogrifications wrought by the gods.

The play’s opening focuses on creation and the emergence of order from chaos, but Ovid’s treatment of myth has more appeal. The well-known story of King Midas (Jenny Hoffman) who shelters Silenus (Jasmine Bernard) and is granted a wish by Bacchus (Ashley Weingardt) serves as a frame for the play. After accidently turning his daughter (Laura Hosek) to gold, Midas must search for a mystic pool that he finds at the play’s end.

In “Alcyone and Ceyx,” narrated by Jessica Pabinquit and Yolanda Luchetti-Knight, Ceyx (Carly Moses) takes an ocean odyssey despite Alcyone’s (Rhianon Frazier) disapproval. Poseidon destroys the ship and Ceyx dies, but Aphrodite (Alex Pina) reunites the couple as seabirds. The poor couple Baucis and Philomon (Allie Sundstrom) offer hospitality to disguised gods Zeus (Chris Hice) and Hermes (Caroline Graham) and are rewarded with their wish to die together without diminution of their love. They are turned into intertwined trees. Leah Ellis, Julia Romero, Andee Schray, and Francesca Tharpe also perform well.
— This article appeared on page F5 of the Albuquerque Journal