Carnival and theatre: performing the utopian magic of Ovid’s Metamorphoses

In this article, I analyse the 2021 adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses which opened at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. I argue that the production conjoined horror and humour in a particularly Ovidian style through a collaborative mode of spectatorship, creating an atmosphere in which actor and spectator came together to imagine a ‘magical space’ in which the traditional hierarchies relating to sex and power were subverted. In Rabelais and his World, Mikhail Bakhtin theorizes about the carnival, a festival of the common people that temporarily subverts social order and can create a momentary utopia. I show that there was a sense of the carnival in the Globe’s Metamorphoses, which touched on many of the themes that relate to Bakhtin’s notion — sex, violence, greed, and power. As the performance transcended from purely theatrical to carnival, the utopian potential of performance was liberated, allowing the re-imagination of social worlds and order. Overall, this article demonstrates how Bakhtin’s theory of the carnival provides a fresh methodology for engaging with Ovidian reception, one that resonates with contemporary discourse relating to Ovid and gender.