Metamorphoses: Fables from Ovid

In a boarding school dormitory, four girls lie giggling and singing. Tomorrow is their debutante ball, and they are too excited to sleep. Their matron, apparently fearsome but actually played with a subtle warmth by Gemma Reynolds, is persuaded to tell them a story, which the girls act out, each then telling her own tale.

And what tales they are. We hear, in graphic detail, tales of a father-daughter sexual relationship; a husband who rapes his wife's sister and cuts out her tongue, inciting the wife to murder her only son and feed him to the husband; men turning into women and women turning into trees; a young girl transformed into a spider by a jealous goddess... 

Each member of this young, all-female company shines individually, bringing, by turns, an unsettling innocence and a vivacious enthusiasm to their characters. The fables all speak of the challenges of being female, but the girlish glee with which they are performed is infectious, and what could have been a disturbing 45 minutes is, in fact, strangely uplifting. 

There is a beautiful simplicity to the production: they use bedsheets as props, by turns twisting them into snakes and ropes and wearing them as billowing cloaks. When Philomela is raped, a silhouette looms over her behind a backlit, hung sheet – a cheap trick, perhaps, but a lot more threatening than watching two schoolgirls act it out. 

Pared-down Metamorphoses may be, but it's full of charisma and completely engaging.