Stacey Strange Photo
L. Peter Callender as Prospero and Sarah Bowles as Ariel.
The play has just begun, and it’s as if the set is already being torn apart. There’s the sound of wind and thunder, the sight of sails fluttering in high wind as sailors struggle to maintain them. The people at the wheel of the ship are shouting to each other and to the crew. They don’t know what’s going to happen to them. But the man in the front and center of the stage does. Standing silent and serene, he’s controlling the storm, controlling the boat and the people on it. In the beginning, he controls everything.
The Tempest — produced by Elm Shakespeare Company and running in Edgerton Park through Sept. 4 — tells the story of Prospero, the former duke of Milan, who, years before the play begins, is betrayed by his brother Antonio and Alonso, the king of Naples. He has been living in exile on an island with his daughter Miranda ever since. Somewhere along the way he has also acquired magical powers, and made two fantastical creatures, the spirit Ariel and the more monstrous Caliban, his servants. When Antonio and Alonso sail close to his island, Prospero summons a storm to shipwreck them and their entourage. He then hopes to use his magic to regain his position as duke and marry his daughter Miranda to Alonso’s son Ferdinand. Meanwhile, members of the shipwrecked entourage are plotting to kill Alonso, and Caliban falls in with other, more drunken members of the entourage in hopes of killing Prospero. Will Prospero succeed in becoming duke again? Will Miranda and Ferdinand live happily ever after? Or will everyone fall to the murder plots against them? And what about Ariel, the faithful servant who yearns for freedom?
Many of Shakespeare’s plays are about people manipulating other people, to sometimes comic and sometimes tragic ends. Sometimes the method of manipulation is charm, cunning, or lies. Sometimes it’s magic. Shakespeare is often also understood to occasionally write commentaries about theater into his plays, perhaps most overtly when his characters themselves put on plays for other characters. The Tempest, written toward the end of Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, is commonly interpreted to be almost entirely about what it is to be a playwright, to write plays, and to make theater. Prospero as playwright is the architect of everything, forcing everyone around him to do his bidding in order to reach the conclusion that he wants. In a move that can feel startlingly modern the more you think about it, though, in time Prospero/the playwright realizes that he can’t reach a satisfying ending unless he gives the people around him/his characters at least some free will to act according to their own desires, and this requires in Prospero a change in heart, away from vengeance and toward generosity.
Elm Shakespeare’s staging of The Tempest, directed by Rebecca Goodheart, leans into this understanding of the play, as even when Prospero has no speaking lines, he’s often there observing the action to make sure everything is going according to his plan. It’s also a unifying idea to the flow of the play. We know that Miranda’s and Ferdinand’s initial attraction to one another feels far too sudden, even before other characters comment on it. The manipulations of the rest of the crew likewise have the sense of a puppet master controlling his puppets. Where some productions of The Tempest are relatively fleet of foot, this one strikes a more steady tone that allows for more eeriness. It gives us space to question Prospero’s intentions instead of just going along for the ride, and makes room for some unsettling questions about whether the spirits of the island and the shipwreck victims aren’t just servants, but slaves.
The tone is helped, first and foremost, by the performances of Ariel (by Sarah Bowles) and Caliban (Benjamin Curns), the two supernatural creatures who usually steal much of the show in a production of The Tempest. In more lighthearted versions of the play, Ariel often appears as a sort of pixie, and Caliban as something like The Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Not here. As played by Curns, Caliban most resembles something like a boar, an effect achieved through a committed physical performance from guttural line readings to lurching body language to even a less human breathing pattern. Bowles’s mesmerizing Ariel, meanwhile, has a half-contorted way of moving and halted way of speaking that amply conveys her otherworldliness and the pain of her captivity even as she seeks to please and carries out many of Prospero’s commands.
Tyler Cruz and Mauricio Miranda play Miranda and Ferdinand, respectively, with a sweetness that adds to the curdling sense that they’re under a spell. Josh Innerst and Jeff Raab play all-too-convincing drunks and would-be coup leaders Stefano and Trinculo. The company of shipwrecked nobles are a vivacious ensemble, conveying bewilderment and political intrigue in equal measure.
It falls then to Prospero to track the evolution of the play’s dramatic themes, and L. Peter Callender is more than ready for the task. He delivers a carefully calibrated performance, beginning the play full of fire and conviction, then slowly but surely, comes across as a man developing doubts, someone who is increasingly less sure that he’s doing the right thing even as he continues to deliver orders. Callender’s performance lays the groundwork for the moment the play changes, and the spells begin to break.
As a post-shutdown return to live theater for Elm Shakespeare, The Tempest is a timely and intriguing choice. Four hundred years later, it remains a strange and often beguiling play, and its themes about people emerging from isolation and captivity resonate with our present in interesting ways, as we continue to reckon with the past, and find our way into a new, altered way of living.
Elm Shakespeare’s The Tempest runs in Edgerton Park through Sept. 4, excepting Mondays. All performances are at 7:30. Visit Elm Shakespeare’s website for more information.
The production is superb. Don't miss it.
Brian Slattery seems not to have noticed that in this production, King Alonso of Naples has been regendered as Queen Alonsa, and the faithful (though prolix and sententious) retainer Gonzago appears as a rock-ribbed old lady, Gonzaga. Other than the rather jarring line "Full fathom five thy mother lies," that spoils the Bard's alliteration, this change is seamless, and the performers do an excellent job of bringing their characters to life.
The play raises deep questions not only about artistic control but about patriarchy and the control of their children's lives by parents, and about some powerful issues of the time that have recently been receiving renewed moral scrutiny -- exploration, conquest, colonialism, and the exploitation of indigenous peoples.
It asks, What is tyranny? What is just rule? Is the image of a "philosopher king" or "benevolent dictator" always a cheat, a fake, a cover-up for cruel oppression? Is there such a thing as a "noble savage," or are primitive peoples brutes or, at best, in need of "civilizing," and enslavement "for their own good"? Are the supposedly civilized new arrivals in a distant culture actually just as "brutal" as the "savages" -- or worse? Shakespeare's fertile imagination even intuits the later phenomenon of "cargo cults."
One more thing: Elm Shakespeare has dispensed with paper programs. If you want to read the program, check it out online ahead of time, or build in some advance time to catch the QR code displayed in the performance area and read the program on your phone. Bring a picnic dinner and a blanket and some comfortable beach chairs. Enjoy, and watch your mind expand.