Peter Oswald's The Golden Ass, based on Roman writer Apuleius's take on an Ancient Greek fable, opens at Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank on Aug. 16, in weather ideally suited to open-air plays.
A comedy of love and desire, The Golden Ass is about a lusty young man who, attempting to turn himself into an owl, accidentally transforms himself into an ass instead.
The play, which involves all 30 of this season's actors, follows his journey as a creature with human desires in an animal's body. There are obvious parallels here with the character of Bottom being temporarily given an ass's head through fairy magic in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play that is also part of this year's season at the Globe, as is Twelfth Night.
The Golden Ass runs Sept. 29.
—By Theatrenow