Perhaps it’s an inauspicious beginning to this blog to post a review of a production that is already closed. Nevertheless, the Seattle Shakespeare Company’s performance of The Tempest was an enjoyable experience with an imaginative staging.

The night began with the ticking of a heart monitor and an ailing Prospero (Michael Winters) hobbling onto the stage in a hospital gown aided by a four-footed walking cane (I admit to being nervous that this prop would be used as his magic staff throughout, but my fears were unfounded). Though Prospero shortly after changes into more wizardly garb, this framing element recurs throughout the play. In the scenes where Prospero is typically most wrothful, our Prospero doubles over and clenches his arm or side and grits through his lines as through a heart attack. It is only after Prospero decides to forgive his brother that his voice is free to vent his full passion. When he commands his spirit-servant Ariel (Hana Lass, veiled in black like a bride at a Goth wedding) to dress him in clothing that his former companions will recognize, we expect Ariel to bring out magnificent robes of state; instead she tenderly dresses him in his original hospital garb, almost as if preparing him for burial. The play ends again with the heart monitor, and the vivid image of Prospero stepping into the light, as it were, with eyes widening on a sudden, indrawn breath.

The Tempest is one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote, and it shares with many of the late Comedies or Romances a great interest in forgiveness and reconciliation. It’s somehow touching to think of Shakespeare the man working through these concepts in his winter years. Turning Prospero into a dying man incorporates these semi-biographical ideas into the play, which becomes an extended dream sequence.

While I would never dare to criticize the Bard, I do think The Tempest presents some difficulties for the director. To ratchet up the stakes, Prospero needs to be ambiguous on at least two points. We have to believe that he might indeed harm his brother, who usurped his Dukedom. And we have to believe that he might not release Ariel from servitude. It’s the ambiguity that makes the eventual reconciliation and release dramatic and moving. But early in the play Shakespeare gives Prospero a speech to his daughter, Miranda, assuring her that no one has been harmed in his storm, and if delivered too convincingly, we don’t feel that Prospero is capable of harming anyone. Prospero is also given several lines assuring Ariel that he will set the spirit free. I felt that the sickness motif clipped Prospero’s anger so much that we lost much of the danger and suspense.

The last Caliban I saw (Bard on the Beach, 2008) was far too pretty and erect - they seemed to take the idea of a ‘noble’ savage quite literally. The audience was left wondering if it would have been such a bad thing if he’d succeeded in mating Miranda; they’d have made beautiful children together. So I enjoyed Peter Dylan O’Connor providing a creeping, vindictive little Caliban we could all despise. Seeing the commoners, Stephano and Trincula, tame the savage beast with their fire water and then pretend they could throw off the shackles of serfdom and rule the island seemed such a great parody of the conquest of America that I wonder if Shakespeare wasn’t a little prescient. (If any directors are reading this, you can have that idea for free. Let’s see a Tempest set in the New World with Wes Studi as Caliban. Ready? Go!)

I hate to insinuate that Hana Lass isn’t all the sprite a guy could wish for, but I have to admit missing all of Ariel’s airy spirits. I appreciate that casting a troupe of actors who have few lines might seem irresponsible in this economic climate, but they always provide such great opportunities for physical comedy that their absence was felt. Likewise, after Miranda and Ferdinand are married there is a masque scene when Prospero shows off his magic powers to the young couple, and all we got was a few colored lights projected on the floor and a Ferdinand swaying like a besmitten mooncalf over the appearance of Ariel making me suspect Ferdinand was already regretting his choice of bride. A cadre of airy spirits would have been useful there, as the scene, once abridged of its dense, mythological elements, serves no purpose but to be a grand spectacle. (In all fairness, halfway through the masque the other supporting cast members joined Ariel’s singing from behind the audience, and I could see a ripple of appreciation at the surprise from the first few rows, but it is an intimate space, and those of us towards the back could see the actors line up. This simple staging may have worked better depending on where one was seated.)

I question the strength of Sebastian’s choices. On Antonio’s entreaty to “draw together” to advance their fortunes by slaying Gonzalo and Alonso in their enchanted sleep, Antonio has to first draw Sebastian’s sword for him. Sebastian is neither shocked by the request nor very committed to it, and during the grand reconciliation at the end, he looks vaguely bored, as if none of it has much to do with him.

The rest of the supporting cast performed admirably, with a suitably tedious Gonzalo, a sulking, scheming Antonio and a delightfully charming Miranda.

The Seattle Shakespeare Company can always be counted on for a solid night of theatrical entertainment, and their Tempest was no exception. If you missed their Tempest, take heart, their 2009-2010 season promises to be exciting, full of crowd favorites Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Henry V and Two Gentlemen of Verona.

(Photos by John Ulman.)

Jul 13, 2009 | permalink