Cast Shines despite 'Polaroid Stories'; Iizuka's Mythology Update Sullies Tale

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Byline: Jayne Blanchard, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Studio Theatre and classic mythology can make for an uneasy pairing. Last season's ambitious production of "Prometheus" was saturated with saccharine New Age-y gloppiness, and this summer's Secondstage offering, "Polaroid Stories," tries to graft stories from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" upon the self-dramatizing tall tales of street children and teenage prostitutes.

Playwright Naomi Iizuka's idea looked good on paper - literally, since the play was also inspired in part by Jim Goldberg's 1987 photo essay, "Raised by Wolves," about the lives of homeless teenagers on the streets of San Francisco and Seattle. Struck by a …