OVID'S METAMORPHOSES

This idiosyncratic version of an Italian classic is blatantly ribald. The translation contains sexual and scatological Anglo-Saxonisms that will shock any Mrs. Grundies who may be listening. Using what publishers call"the strange voice techniques"of London's avant-garde Roy Hart Theater, Noah Pikes mugs vocally through Charles Boer's inelegant rendering of Ovid. Unlike, say, the oral pyrotechnicians of the late, lamented Polish Art Theater, Pike's style exhibits neither skill nor taste, only self-indulgence. Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: NOV/DEC 96]