A woman dressed as a man in gold lamé, wearing a powdered wig, stands on top of a box and sings lines of Ovid. Outrageous, fantastical, campy, beautiful: Scenes from The Metamorphosis at Studio 7 at Hotel Vajra, brings Ovid's poetry to life in unexpected ways. Zeus wears the expression of a gangster in a gold-rimmed bathrobe. Bacchus explodes onto the stage amid roaring guitars, in skin-tight purple silk pants, grapes dangling from his body. In a dream-like scene, several men are trees, leaves flickering between their fingers, holding up arcs of gauze hung with golden leaves, as the sound of crickets pulses through the theatre. The live keyboard music is spare and airy as the performance space. Veering between beauty and outlandishness, Scenes from The Metamorphosis manages to sustain an equilibrium between the tragic material of the stories and the playfulness of the production.

Sometimes the play goes over the top. While gun-slinging youths didn't seem outrageous, five pool boys dressed in skimpy sailor's outfits, cheeks smeared with blush, bumping and grinding to rap evoked the ambiance of a soft-core porno. Juxtaposed with this sensationalism was Samuna KC's subtle and grave portrayal of Alcyone, a lover waiting for her husband to return from sea. The crushed movements with which KC illustrated her paralysis elevated her Alcyone above the conventional, passive, pining female role, and her disintegration was powerful to watch. Later in the performance she would play an old, pious woman, and a nymph. Chameleon performances were carried out by each member of the small cast. In each role he played, Karma seemed to be a completely different human being—from an uptight King Midas consumed by greed, to a spoiled teenager, to his best performance of the night as the god of spring, where he proved to be a master of slapstick and physical humour. Bidesh Thapaliya as Morpheus was mesmerising—every muscle in his body was engaged in his cold-blooded role, his haunted eyes flickered across the audience as he flirted with death.

Full of dancing, singing, screaming, and laughter—Scenes from The Metamorphosis is overdone, carnivalesque. But it should be—it is a feast of imagination. At times, the momentum flags or falters. The production takes great risks, and when successful, the payoff is huge. The stage and actors are constantly transforming, stitched together by the penetrating narration of Divya Dev Pant. By the end, as candles float in the pool at the foreground of the stage, the audience is left with the buoyancy with which Metamorphoses is directed and played.

Scenes from The Metamorphosis
Directed by Sabine Lehman
Set Design by Ludmilla Hungerhuber
Studio 7 production at Hotel Vajra
Opening 4 May 7:15 and performances every Friday, Saturday and Sunday till 20 May
01-427 1545 or info@hotelvajra.com