As in her Tony Award–winning Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman transforms Greek mythology—here the story of Jason and the Argonauts—into a mesmerising piece of theatre. Encountering an array of fantastical creatures and daunting challenges in their “first voyage of the world,” Jason and his crew illustrate the essence of all such journeys to follow—their unpredictability, their inspiring and overwhelming breadth of emotion, their lessons in the inevitability of failure and loss. As the goddesses Athena and Hera narrate (and participate in) the tale, we come to recognise the deep humanity of the characters in their desires and struggles. However certain they are to end in grief, our constant quests for love and the realisation of our dreams make us who we are.

Zimmerman brings to Argonautika her trademark ability to encompass the full range of human experience in a work as entertaining as it is instructive.