The original musical had a nightclub setting, but juxtaposing the traditional theater gives the new production a theatrical metaphor for a clash of cultures.

Senate Chamber For dozens of decades, journalists have employed theatrical metaphors to describe proceedings in the Senate chamber.

Each play finds a different theatrical metaphor to represent our brief and homely passage on earth.

Much later this theatrical metaphor achieves its apotheosis.

Mr. Lucas, the very gifted writer of "Prelude to a Kiss" and "Reckless," has created an expressly theatrical, potentially resonant metaphor for the ways memory can cripple.

Mr. Lepage turns unsettlingly naive devices into luminous theatrical metaphors.

This also could be a reference to one of the world's most famous theatrical metaphors: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."

(Note that I have strained to substitute part for the overused figure of speech, role to play, but cannot avoid the theatrical metaphor of some character playing a part.)

Goffman forms a theatrical metaphor in defining the method in which one human being presents itself to another based on cultural values, norms, and expectations.

"I loved that idea as a theatrical metaphor," Ms. Weems said.