A billowing, grey silk curtain like a ship’s wind-buffeted sail fills the proscenium arch, and the thunder of a musical storm is already building up a tempest as the audience arrive, a foretaste of what is to follow when the lights go down. Less noticed, but equally ominous, the stage is flanked by towers of huge black loudspeakers: not trusting the actors’ projection in this large house, they will all be miked.
The action seems to be set on the barren grey slopes of an alien planet, costumes are a mixture of modern and sci-fi and the text is heavily cut. Prospero (Sigourney Weaver) is now the deposed Duchess, not Duke, of Milan, and her old friend Gonzalo (Selina Cadell) is now also female.
The gender changes are unremarkable, and the cuts concentrate the action, but the amplification often makes it feel as though one is watching actors lip-synching, and when you can’t see faces clearly, you may wonder who is actually speaking. Making louder doesn’t correct unclear delivery, and it is not just vocal projection that is needed, especially in a house of this size.
Unless you already know the story, a couple of shouts in the noisy storm may not be enough to designate shipwreck, and the exposition, with Prospero recalling their backstory to her daughter Miranda, who is concerned for those on the stricken vessel, may not sink in either as ears adjust to the amplification.
Prospero is sitting downstage centre looking straight out, but she doesn’t connect with the audience. Nor do you really feel she is controlling things, though, after moving to a seat centre rear, she is on stage throughout. Apart from a few gestures at some points, she seems to be observing rather than using her magic powers or those of her servant sprite Ariel to make things happen. She has little chance to establish her authority until nearing the end of the play with Prospero’s great speeches after the masque (which we don’t see) and when she renounces magic when her unembellished but sincere delivery hints at the bookish scholar she once was.
It is the arrival of Ariel, summoned by Prospero after the exposition, that brings the production to life with Mason Alexander Park dropping down from the flies. This is an intriging performance. Helped by her/their position hung high on wires, they do have command of the house, and we see the power of their magic. Their rasping voice suggests the resentment they feel against the servitude they are still under, and the contrast when they begin to sing bewitching is amazingly beautiful.
Caliban, the other native islander enslaved by Prospero, is Ariel’s antithesis. He is neither fishy nor clad in a gaberdine as the text suggests; Forbes Masson is clad in a combined corset and jockstrap, his body marked with scar-like veins. He is a pitiful figure who gets some of Shakespeare’s best poetry but little chance to deliver it in comic scenes that aren’t funny.
Prospero’s shipwrecked enemies and their courtiers are distinctly spoken, but their machinations not easy to follow (too much cut perhaps), but the instant romance between her daughter Miranda and Ferdinand, the son of her enemy, played by Mara Huf and James Phoon, is helped by their youth and good looks.
James Lloyd’s production eschews the spectacle and magical transformatiions that were aimed at Jacobean audiences and once were a feature of Drury Lane, but formal groupings, designer Soutra Gilmour’s monochrome silks, blown in the air or stretched across the stage, and Jon Clark’s constantly changing lighting with its spotlights stabbing space produce their own kind of beauty.
Lloyd keeps Prospero on stage throughout but gives Sigourney Weaver little chance to establish her authority. We need to see her change from revenge and retribution to reconciliation and to exercise the magic powers that she finally gives up, but she is too often lost in the mists this production is fond of. It is a play full of phrases that resonate, but how many will newcomers go home remembering?
Reviewer: Howard Loxton