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CNN Live Sunday

Broadway Play Takes on Special Significance After 9-11

Aired June 02, 2002 - 17:19   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: The Big Apple is preparing for the 56th annual Tony Awards. Broadway's top prizes will be given out tonight in a ceremony hosted by Bernadette Peters and Gregory Hines.

One of the nominees for best play has been getting special attention in wake of September 11. CNN's Beth Nissen takes a look at "Metamorphoses."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is without question the play that has made the biggest splash, on or off Broadway this season.

"Metamorphoses," the enactment of 10 ancient Greek myths about change is staged in and around a large pool of water.

MARY ZIMMERMAN, DIRECTOR, "METAMORPHOSES": Water is a symbol in many cultures of change. The big, watershed moment in someone's life -- even that word -- it somehow is connected to big change.

NISSEN: Director Mary Zimmerman has reimagined the stories recorded by Ovid in about 2 A.D. for audiences in 2002.

The familiar character of Midas, for example, is a successful grasping businessman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That everything I touch, everything I put my hand to will turn to solid gold.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a really, bad idea

(LAUGHTER)

NISSEN: Midas' metamorphosis is tragic. He gets his wish, his golden touch, at the cost of his daughter.

Most all the stories are full of warning, of symbolism, of metaphor.

ZIMMERMAN: There's something profoundly intimate about a metaphor. It's a secret language, it's a code language that 300 or, you know, 600 people are understanding simultaneously, and it kind of knits us together imaginatively. NISSEN: In wake of September 11, one story especially brings the audience together, brings the audience to tears. The story of Halcyon and her husband Ceyx who sales off to work one day.

ZIMMERMAN: And then out of nowhere, a clear blue day, specifically, a storm hits him and he's killed. And his dying wish as he goes under the waves is just let my body be found.

NISSEN: "Metamorphoses" was first performed less than a week after September 11.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ceyx, come home.

NISSEN: The director worried about the stark portrayals of grief and loss. But she saw relief in the audience's tears.

ZIMMERMAN: Why should we weep for Halcyon and Ceyx? What are they to us? Well, they're us. They are mirrors of ourselves. I just had to face that catharsis is a real thing.

NISSEN: There is catharsis through laughter too, in the story of Phaeton, who tells his therapist what it's like to be the mortal son of the god of the son, and never know his fiery father.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd see him pass by every day, of course. Who doesn't.

NISSEN: The mortals in "Metamorphosis" are so commonly adrift, pitiful, tragic, but their stories have purpose.

ZIMMERMAN: By being given spectacles that evoke pity and terror, we come out alerted to the world in a new way. And these stories are really old. And I think that the comfort in them for us is to see that it's not unprecedented, that people have survived horrible transformations.

NISSEN: And have somehow continued on unbowed.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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