THE TEMPEST at the Barbican - The Bard goes digital...

For a play about the use and misuse of magical powers, I have not yet seen a production of THE TEMPEST that was particularly filled with wonder.  It's almost as if directors are afraid to embrace it, as if they are worried that it will be criticized as being too obvious, too much like the over-produced Shakespeare productions of the actor/managers of old.

So it was a surprise to hear that Gregory Doran's new RSC production had gone for a tie-in with Intel to include video projections and motion-capture technology - well if that wouldn't bring the wonder then something was seriously wrong!  The other selling point was that Simon Russell Beale was playing Prospero which in itself is a bit of a special effect.

I am still unsure where I sit with THE TEMPEST, it has one of my favourite Shakespearean speeches and other moments of great poetry but the fragmented nature of the plot means that the vengeful Prospero, by far the most interesting character, is frequently absent from the stage.  We seem to spend an awful lot of time with the Milan/Naples faction of lost lords, none of whom are interesting.

Prospero was Duke of Milan but was deposed by his brother Antonio, aided by the King of Naples.  Helped by courtier Gonzalo, Prospero escaped with his young daughter Miranda in a small boat, also laden with his magic books.  They land on an island where Prospero discovers Ariel, a spirit trapped in a tree by the now-dead witch Sycorax, and her disfigured son Caliban.  Prospero easily subjugates both but promises Ariel he will release him one day.

Prospero learns that Antonio, the King and his son Prince Ferdinand are on a boat nearby so he conjures a mighty storm to sink the ship and the passengers wash up on the island.  Prospero and Miranda discover Ferdinand and the young couple - of course - fall instantly in love.  The surviving passengers remain lost until Prospero brings all together, finally reconciled with friend and foe alike.

For all it's whiz-bang graphics, at the production's centre was Simon Russell Beale troubled Prospero.  It was an interesting performance, shot through with Beale's very human qualities as an actor, none more so than his reading of the wonderful "Our revels now are ended..." speech.  Rather than playing it for just the poetry of the words, he spun the words with a real feeling of bitterness; it felt like his Prospero was aware that his life has been wasted on his island and it seemed that he is realization of Miranda's love for Ferdinand will leave him truly alone.

The play's climactic scene - where Prospero finally gathers all the characters of the island and the shipwrecked boat together - was played very mournfully, Prospero's muted forgiveness of his brother and the King for overthrowing him, as well as forgiving Caliban for his murderous plot with the drunken servants, seemed more like a man who is almost broken with the weight of seeking vengeance.  However his final speech - where Prospero pleads for the audience to give him his freedom now his magic has been abandoned - was very moving.

The always dependable James Hayes was great fun as the drunk butler Stephano although a little Simon Trinder as the jester Trinculo went a long way.  Jenny Rainsford was very likeable as Miranda and I liked Mark Quartley as Ariel, a role possibly made more difficult by the technology, but he made the spirit a real presence with his hesitant tiptoe walk and clambering about the set.  Joe Dixon was also fine as Caliban but again seemed imbued with the mournful feel of the production.

The big selling point - going by the size of the Intel logo on the poster at any rate - was the use of computer graphics and motion-capture and they certainly were arresting and occasionally thrilling.  Stephen Brimson Lewis designed a large standing set of a shipwrecked hull and from above the stage there is a cylindrical shape which occasionally descended, such as when Prospero reminds Ariel of how he was trapped in a tree by the witch Sycorax - in an instant the tree seemed to appear from nowhere, it's spindly branches cracking and groaning, only to vanish as quickly as it arrived.

 

I noticed the occasional flash of light on Ariel's costume which showed where the motion-capture sensors were; at certain moments Quartley would make a movement and suddenly Ariel was projected onto the stage trapped in the tree, flapping above the stage like a frightening phoenix or walking through the air high above the stage.  The disappointing thing though was I would rather have watched the ethereal Quartley than any video-game approximation of him.

The computer graphics came into their own in Miranda and Ferdinand's wedding masque where the three goddesses Iris, Ceres and Juno serenade them with operatic voices.  As they do this, the stage was flooded with almost fauvist landscapes, vividly coloured mountains and fields as well as glowing peacock feathers, and multi-coloured flowers appearing on the goddess' dress as she hovered above the stage.

An interesting experiment certainly but the wrecked ship set was a cumbersome one and left little space for the video projections to really work on the whole of the stage; I feel it would have worked better if the set had occasionally broke apart to give a space for the projections to fully transform the stage.

I am glad I saw this version of THE TEMPEST however but for all the IT bells and smells, it will stay in the memory for the essential human element of Simon Russell Beale's troubled and conflicted Prospero.

THE TEMPEST at Sadlers Wells - David Bintley's damp squib

Almost a year ago we went to Sadler's Wells to see a triple bill from Birmingham Royal Ballet, the works choreographed by the company's artistic director David Bintley.  There were all enjoyable in their own way with one, THE KING DANCES, being truly memorable, so when it was announced that Bintley's dance adaptation of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST was to appear at Sadler's Wells, we were keen to see it.

Sadly, although commendable in various areas of the production, it left you feeling that this TEMPEST had blown itself out somewhere between Birmingham and London.

I would have thought that you would want to stage a ballet of THE TEMPEST if you had an extra dimension to bring to the play but I sat there as one scene followed another from the play feeling more and more becalmed...yes there were nice moments but they were fleeting.

Ultimately it all felt a little too polite; as Virginia Woolf said of another female writer "It aimed to soar but agreed to perch".  There was no particular larger-than-life feel to it, no feeling that between them Prospero and Ariel could conjure up wonders.  Sally Beamish's score was interesting in spells (no pun intended) but ultimately for most of the first act was too wishy-washy to inspire much excitement.

The infuriating thing was that there were good things within it: Rae Smith's excellent set suggested the curves in the bottom of a boat and had a great reveal at the end when the ship was suddenly revealed as in burnished copper, ready to return the principals to Naples.  The opening image too showed great promise: the burnished, glittering ship seen in miniature hanging in mid-air only to be caught and held aloft by an airborne Ariel.

There were also likeable turns from Jenna Roberts as Miranda, Mathias Dingman as Ariel and Tyrone Singleton as Caliban but Iain Mackay's Prospero felt woefully undercharged and flashed around the stage more like a ballet version of Captain Jack Sparrow than as the vengeful deposed Duke of Milan.

Only in the last ten minutes or so did the production kick into life when Bruno Poet's lighting created a circle of magic in the darkness for Prospero to confront his enemies but Bintley's gesturing choreography could never match or even illustrate the haunting quality of a speech like Prospero's "Our revels now are ended..."

After the effortless magic of The Royal Ballet's LA FILLE MAL GARDÉE a few days earlier, this all felt... well, over to you Will Shakespeare... "like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind".

THE TEMPEST at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse: it's going to be a bumpy night...

So here we are, the final production in the Globe's staging of the last four plays of William Shakespeare which have laid bare the hidden and not-so-hidden links within them.  Fathers lose daughters, mothers vanish or are never present, love is discovered by chance, physical journeys are bound upon and safe havens sought while coincidence exists alongside magic...

Oddly enough I have only seen THE TEMPEST once before on stage, I seem to have seen filmed or tv versions more often.  The only stage version seen was Sam Mendes' dreary production at the Old Vic in 2010 with an under-whelming Stephen Dillaine as Prospero and the mixed UK and US cast turning the text into a right fugue for tinhorns.

No such problems for Dominic Dromgoole's production at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse which despite it's spartan, fixed-design stage, still managed to be infused with the right amount of mystery and imagination to suggest the more magical moments of the play.

If I have a criticism of the production it would be that it seemed a little too benign at times - moments such as the two murder plots to kill both Alonso and Prospero seemed to come and go without causing too many ripples of alarm.

Tim McMullan is not usually an actor I warm to - his sonorous voice can be too distracting - but I enjoyed his performance as Prospero, the Duke of Milan who, 12 years before the start of the play, was overthrown by his jealous brother and bundled aboard an unsafe boat with his three year-old daughter Miranda and set loose on the sea.  McMullan had the right commanding presence and was a believable magus, capable of bending the elements to shipwreck his brother and retinue of lords onto the strange island where he himself was washed up with his daughter.  He also spoke Prospero's last two famous speeches - "Our revels now are ended..." and "Now my charms are all o'erthrown..." with great simplicity.

Phoebe Pryce - daughter of Jonathan who we saw as Jessica in the Globe's MERCHANT OF VENICE last year - was good as Miranda, a dutiful daughter but eager to fall in love with the King of Naples' son Ferdinand when he is separated from the others during the shipwreck and there was also an interesting performance from Pippa Nixon as Ariel, Prospero's spirit servant who also is aching to be free.

Fisayo Akinade was a bit too obvious and one-note as Prospero's subjugated native slave Caliban but there was better fun to be found in the low comedy antics of Trevor Fox as the permanently soused Stephano and the flamboyant Trinculo of Dominic Rowan, his comedy 'business' at times threatened to capsize his scenes but he is such an engaging actor that they were great fun.

Another reason for the success of the production was the sympathetic performance of Joseph Marcell as Gonzalo, Prospero's friend who came to his aid when he was deposed by filling his boat into exile with provisions and, more importantly, with books on magic which Prospero has used to his advantage.

Jonathan Fensom, although constrained by the afore-mentioned playing space, made good use of the stage and made necessity a virtue by having a large flat rock in the middle of the stage which was turned around for each scene giving the actors something to clamber over and around, simple but effective.  Stephen Warbeck's music was ever-present and engaging throughout.  Needless to say, Prospero's lovely parting words asking for the audience's applause to free him from the island were undercut by the usual end-of-play meaningless jig about.

The Globe is to be applauded - and I did! - for staging these last four plays so one can make connections with their recurring themes of love and reconciliation, now bring on the events to honour the 400 years since Shakespeare's "little life was rounded with a sleep".

Well Constant Reader, that's *that* crossed off the list. For some reason, I have never seen a production of THE TEMPEST. I know... killing isn't it? Not even when Vanessa Redgrave played Prospero at The Globe - and if I didn't see that....

I had seen Derek Jarman's 1979 film version but remember being totally baffled by it as I was not familiar with the play - all I remember was Elisabeth Welch as a Goddess singing STORMY WEATHER - utterly brilliant! Sadly Miss Welch was not available for reasons of mortality to join the cast at the Old Vic on Thursday. More's the pity.Sam Mendes' production is the latest in his much-vaunted and slightly pretentiously-titled Bridge Project in which two productions are cast with both English and American actors. Much is always made of this, Kenneth Branagh could bore for Britain on the AMAZING concept of using UK/US actors play Shakespeare, but it's been going on for years ffs! John Gielgud's Hamlet to Lillian Gish's Ophelia; Paul Robeson's Othello to Peggy Ashcroft's Desdemona; James Mason's Brutus and Gielgud's Cassius to Marlon Brando's Marc Antony and Louis Calhern's JULIUS CAESAR, Gielgud's Henry IV to Orson Welles' Falstaff in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT etc.

I saw one of Mendes' Bridge productions last year THE WINTER'S TALE which was ok thanks to the performances of Simon Russell Beale and Sinead Cusack but hardly earth-shattering. THE TEMPEST sadly cannot draw on even these talents.

Within 10 minutes of the production starting I was groaning. I had heard the reports that Stephen Dillaine as Prospero was muffling his delivery but even before he spoke we had Alvin Epstein making noises as Gonzalo - "Ee o' eh' Ba Ee ho" was all I heard - and I was about 10 rows back in the stalls. I was all but shouting out "Speak from your bumhole not through it!"

Ok let's name names - out of the American actors I liked Christian Camargo's Ariel (hardly 'an airy spirit' but well-spoken and an arresting presence), Ron Cephas Jones' Caliban (again well-spoken and with a real stage presence), Jonathan Lincoln Fried as Alonson (a bit stolid but again well-spoken) and Thomas Sadoski as Stephano (a nice hair-trigger feeling of menace)Now the English - I liked Edward Bennett as Ferdinand but I was aware too that his over-emphatic delivery and stolid presence offers little variety in his performance, Anthony O'Donnell gave his usual sterling support as Trinculo making the 'rude mechanicals' scenes bearable and although Juliet Rylance was a convincing Miranda I found her delivery annoying, horribly reminiscent of Stella Gonet's matronly tones.
Which brings us to Stephen Dillaine as Propero. I must put my hand up to say I don't care for him much, I find his wheedling delivery profoundly irritating and earthbound. But who wants an earthbound Prospero? I don't understand how an actor can be given the opportunity to play one of the great roles and piss it away as Dillaine does. You want to feel the poetry in his lines? You want to hear Shakespeare speaking through him in his farewell to the theatre? Well you won't get it from Dillaine who plays the whole thing like an irritated old giffer moaning from his garden shed.I can only presume he is taking his lead from Mendes but it's a misguided lead. The production never felt to be leading anywhere or even know it had arrived. I waited for something to happen, to lift us out of the Old Vic to Prospero's unnamed island but we remained trapped in Tom Piper's cave-like set although Paul Pyant's subtle lighting shifts at least gave us an idea of where we should be in our minds.

As I sat there I found myself drifting back to Ian Charleson - although to be honest it doesn't take much for that to happen.

Ian was a well-received Ariel in 1978 at the Royal Shakespeare Company opposite Michael Hordern's Prospero and would have been sixty this year, the perfect age for Propero. Imagining the way Ian could have made the lines come alive made me resent Dillaine's whittering all the more.