At the Edinburgh Fringe, the solo show, A Poem and a Mistake, is playing for the entire month of August at the iconic Assembly Rooms. I was curious to see how contemporary American playwright Cheri Magid would approach the first-century Roman poet, Ovid; the title of her play replicates words that the poet used in a letter in which he alludes to the reason why Emperor Augustus had exiled him from Rome. The poem, he refers to, was probably his Ars Amatorium, with its focus on erotic love and seduction. There have been multiple retellings of Ovid’s work over the centuries, so A Poem and a Mistake draws on that fertile territory that Ovid has passed down to us.
Performed in the elegant Assembly Drawing Room, the set couldn’t be simpler: a desk with a large chair behind it, a stand-up mic to the left. Enter a young woman who seamlessly plays many parts. In the real world, she morphs into her professor, boyfriends and girlfriends, in the mythical world, gods and goddesses, even animals. A postgrad student in Classics at a prestigious university, Myrrah (a character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses) sets up a dialogue with her professor, whose very English upper-class voice is heard as a Voice Over. The dialogue between the two is taut and fast paced as she challenges her teacher’s views. How she asks him can we view the fifty or so sexual assaults on women and men in The Metamorphoses today? Her interlocutor is at a loss to answer her questions, murmuring that Ovid’s poetry is simply about love and refusing to address issues of misogyny and power. This disagreement seems to trigger a magical shift, engendering some of the transformations in the Metamorphoses, which give teacher and student, alike, an immense freedom. He morphs into a woman who looks remarkably like Myrrah, while she morphs into a catalogue of Ovid’s mythological figures, declaring, “I am not Myrrah, I am transformed. I am in the Metamorphoses”. Surprise follows surprise. In one scene, Myrrah is turned into Pan, the god of fertility, fields and sex, and immediately after into a reed, the pipe on which Pan plays. At the end of the play, the actor steps out of her many mythical roles, questioning why she has decided to make a play about myth. The reply comes fast, “When something shrinks you, you need something epic and mythical.”
A Poem And A Mistake, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2025.
While A Poem and a Mistake dramatizes several issues concerning gender and power in an entertaining and thought-provoking way, my one reservation concerns the rapidity with which these transformations take place. It would probably have been more effective, dramatically speaking, to spend more time fleshing out a smaller number of characters. That said, Sarah Baskin is outstanding, seamlessly turning into the many human and mythical characters under our very eyes, while director Michelle Bossy has helped her create a nuanced, very physical interpretation for what is undoubtedly a challenging script.
This post was written by the author in their personal capacity.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.
This post was written by Margaret Rose.
The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.
