Best Direction

Jeremy Cole assembled an excellent group of actors, each of whom played several roles, to bring Ovid's fables into the twentieth century in Metamorphoses. He balanced the tone of the production comfortably between comedy and tragedy, mythic resonance and contemporary humor. The set -- a huge, water-filled granite pool that could be anything from a Hollywood swimming pool to the Greeks' dangerous, wine-dark sea -- was a miracle of design and engineering, put together by Michael Duran, Ben Wofford and producer John Ashton. Cole's Metamorphoses seductively combined lighthearted pleasure with a powerful theme.