Lovers' Legends Unbound

Rating:
Summary: Throw the book away and listen to the CD!
Review: Drama at its best is mind-altering, and this stuff will have you reeling. This is gut-wrenching, gripping Greek tragedy, undiluted and not polite. But oh-so-true, and ever so cleansing, down to the core. Listen to it again and again, but not all at once, it is too condensed and too powerful. Kudos to the director for taking these stories in all their intensity and instead of narrating the action, acting the underlying human dilemmas, which know no time or country. And Timothy Carter's acting is superb through the twists and turns of passion. Truly masterful theater!

Rating:
Summary: Where were these stories when I was in junior high?
Review: This is a well-put-together package, a CD and a booklet with all the Greek myths they never told us about when we were young. Frankly, I could have used them, back in those days before Stonewall. But better late than never.

First, the CD. This is not a narration, it is more like performance art, and the tone and tempo of the stories evolves and progresses from first to last. It is obvious that a lot of work went into restoring these stories, and Calimach (the mythographer) has made some interesting and thought-provoking choices. Narcissus no longer has Echo for a foil. Now he plays opposite Ameinias, his male lover, who provides a symmetry and elegance to the story which Ovid's version, in its search for metamorphoses, lacks. Equally interesting is his separation of the myth of Pelops and Poseidon into two separate stories, one in which the god takes his beloved hero to Olympus, the other in which the god helps Pelops win a wife. This work should give all lovers of Greek myth something to think about.

The book which accompanies the CD is very nicely done, and has some very nice reproductions of ancient art. Good job!