Cast List

James Marvin Ted Hughes/Jupiter/Lycabus/Tereus

Claire Trevien Sylvia Plath/Juno/Minerva/Procne

Bruce Dean Tiresias/Nurse

Sam Smith Bacchus/Hermaphroditus/Itys

Gwen Kent Arachne/Salmacis/Ino

Sam Kinchin-Smith Acoetes/Narcissus/Silenus

Sandra Schira Semele/Philomela/Autone

Tom Steward Midas/Cinyras/Opheltes/Pandion

Rose Biggin Tiresias(female)/Myrrah/Echo

Joe Watson Pentheus/Storyteller/Man

Katy Brooke-Bullard Agave/Storyteller/Nymph/Woman

Ted Hughes and Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid. He wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations.

Edward James Hughes, referred to normally as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. He is considered by many to be one of the best poets of his generation. He wrote on topics of love, mythological transformations and abandoned women.

Hannah Pidsley - Producer

I'm Hannah, the producer of Ted Hughes' Ovid. I found the script to this play in the "reduced items" bin at the RSC shop in Stratford, and bought it for 99p. I've always loved Ovid's Metmorphoses, and so when I read this script, I adored it straight away! I asked if any of my friends were interested in directing it, and Katy said she would... One night, very late when we'd both been at a party, she told me she had a concept: frame it by telling the story of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath... I knew immediatly it would work, and that if anyone could pull it off, it was Katy...

I've loved doing this play; we have a wonderful cast and a great crew, and we've just had so much fun!

I have also produced Othello and Oleanna for Warwick Drama.

The concept.

By conflating the stories of Ted Hughes and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the latter is seen refracted through the commonly known biographical detail of Hughes’s life, but in a way that brings renewed depth to Hughes’ story and renewed relevance to Ovid’s.

Through this simple step, out of the ashes of Ovid’s archaism a whole new story can rise: A story about fantasy in the purely Freudian sense: revolutionary, pre-civilization, but fantasy that is not alienated from our day to day life but entwined within it- resultantly we hope to show how Greek myths are relevant since they inform our current dreams, actions, and unconscious thought patterns.

· The stories of Metamorphoses are only connected through narrative in the loosest sense – this refraction imposes a framework around them that makes them more digestible to a modern, theatre going audience who will expect a story.

· By bridging the gap between domestic/ biographical drama and mythic fantasy we hope to elevate banal, daily life to the level of epic fantasy.

· Encourages the audience to exercise their imagination and extend their fantasy vocabulary.

· Investigate from the perspective of literary criticism and psychoanalytic theory what in Hughes private life drew him to this ancient work, selecting only the twelve stories that he did and interpreting/ translating them in this way.

· Highlighting the mythic status we imbue on (among others) literary celebrities.

· From a purely practical setting- this concept allows us to achieve many of the transformations stipulated in the stage directions but in a symbolic manner, using household furniture – E.g. when man and woman become one in Hermaphroditus and Salmacis this can occur behind a shower curtain e.t.c.

Our Ovid...

The play unfolds on the set of a London open plan flat; the stage is cast in a lilac-grey dusk. In the bed a couple are making love. The sex is passionate, alternating between tenderness and playful aggression. An arm is raised, another arm brings it lower. The love-making is almost complete. Lights come up on a singer, and she begins to sing:

In nova fert animus mutates dicere formas corpora:

Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed

Into different bodies.

Some are transformed just once

And live their whole lives after in that shape.

Others have a facility

For changing themselves as they please.

Now am I ready to tell how bodies are changed

Into different bodies:

In nova fert animus mutates dicere formas corpora.

During her song the sex act is completed, and half of the couple has removed himself from the bed. The lights on her go down, the lights on the main stage are lifted. Standing over the bed and fixing his white flannel dressing gown is a male character, assessable by posture to be in his mid thirties: this is Ted. In the bed lies Sylvia. The dialogue begins:

Ted: One time, Jupiter, happy to be idle,

Swept the cosmic mystery aside

And draining another goblet of ambrosia

Teased Juno,

Sylvia: Who drowsed in bed beside him.

Ted/ Jupiter: This love of male and female is a strange business.

Fifty-fifty investment in the madness,

Yet she ends up with nine-tenths of the pleasure.

Sylvia/ Juno: A man might think so.

And so a night begins of erotically charged and startlingly evocative storytelling between man and wife, prefiguring the translation Ted would come to make of Ovid’s Metamorphosis much later, after Sylvia’s death. As the stories the couple tells each other of classical myths and fallen deities become gradually more complex, brutal and fantastic, the literary duo are joined on stage by the cast of their visions- Gods, nymphs, satyrs, kings, judges, hogs, spiders, nightingales and trees in a golden hued realm of the imagination. Through the tales they tell though we see not one play, but two: as the biographical detail of Ted and Sylvia’s life is refracted through the lens of legend, and new light is, hopefully, shed on both. This is the concept for our re-imagining of Ted Hughes’ translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, adapted for the stage by Tim Supple and Simon Reade.