In the last play he wrote alone, William Shakespeare set a wizard on a remote island and gave him the power to conjure storms, the temperament to seek revenge and the humanity to forgive those who wronged him. Prospero uses magic to control other people, not unlike what a playwright does with imaginary characters, and some consider The Tempest to be Shakespeare’s personal fable of his life in art. Lost Nation Theater‘s production features the company’s founding artistic director, Kim Bent, as the magician, surrounded by a cast of 13.
Among the play’s memorable lines is the observation “What’s past is prologue,” a notion all too true for these characters who nurse grudges and attempt to repeat treacheries. The plot is an intricate weave of past events recounted during a dramatized present that covers but an afternoon, from a shipwreck to the rounding up of all the survivors. That story gets told briskly, but every step in it is animated by history.
The source of conflict has been simmering for 12 years, since Prospero, the duke of Milan, was usurped by his brother, Antonio, with help from the king of Naples, Alonso. Prospero was exiled in a leaky boat with his infant daughter, Miranda. By good fortune, they reached an island where Prospero could use the magic he was studying to subjugate the two natives: Caliban, the monster son of a witch, and Ariel, a spirit that witch had imprisoned.
In the play’s present, with Miranda now a young woman, Prospero learns that his scurvy brother and other nobles are sailing near his lonely island. Ariel executes the magic Prospero dictates, which raises a storm at sea to deposit the voyagers in conveniently separate groups on the island. Soon, four stories unfold: Miranda and Ferdinand, the prince of Naples, meet and fall in exuberant love; Alonso grieves his presumed-drowned son; Antonio plots another power grab; and Alonso’s butler and jester meet Caliban and share the universal language of drunkenness.
The text demands spectacle, but not the kind of knockout stunts that cause a modern audience to marvel at the movies. Shakespeare’s theatricality can be produced with surprising little alterations of reality that an audience must enhance for themselves through imagination. In our minds, Ariel can be invisible, a banquet can disappear, and a storm can overpower a ship. Onstage, Ariel must express invisibility through movement, the food must vanish by a trick we enjoy, and the sensations of a storm must reach us even when not a drop of seawater is present.
The emphasis is not on big spectacle but on a gentle kind of fantasy expressed with music and movement.
Director Ann Harvey serves the show’s theatricality by adding three sprites to spring about the stage, helping viewers sense Ariel’s powers with their gauzy, otherworldly presence. With direction from movement coach Emma Manion, the three give the production a dreamlike quality of dance. And they sing. You’ll hear the “full fathom five” verse set to music, along with several other songs of Ariel’s. The music complements the show’s extensive sound effects, which are largely effective but occasionally too much of a good thing.
Beyond the wonderful conceit of the sprites, Harvey focuses less on magic than on straight speech in a play that should float on disorientation and wonder. The text is spoken, but without much stagecraft to dramatize sensations. In most instances, Harvey elicits from the actors a clear sense of what the characters want so that Shakespeare’s words come to life. But the play’s blocking too often amounts to meaningless movement in vague space, doing little to amplify the text. Sometimes it undermines it: Antonio sketches out an assassination plot to a confederate standing far across the stage, which signals a lecture, not a conspiracy.
Still, the attention to delivering the text has its benefits. Shakespeare’s language can befuddle, what with the odd word order and unfamiliar terms, but it can also liberate. To hear it and discover meaning in it is like looking at the whole world from a new perspective. While this production doesn’t consistently transport viewers, the show has bright moments, offering a fervent love story, solid scheming and big comic relief.
Through it all, Prospero presides, and Shakespeare has made him both hero and villain. He’s by turns a serene god seeing to a magical kingdom and a controlling force who has enslaved Caliban and Ariel and now toys with his enemies. In a quiet performance, Bent plays him with the solemnity of age leavened by occasional flashes of playfulness.
Stacia Richard, as Miranda, and Evan John Lewis, as Ferdinand, are earnest young lovers with sparks of wit. Jim Phinney, as the rogue Antonio, is impressively purposeful in setting out a murder plot, bringing life and clarity to Shakespeare’s text. Jim Thompson plays a sympathetic Gonzalo, the only noble with true nobility.
Introducing the character with unsettling, fishlike movement, Töve Wood makes Caliban a shifty wild card. When Harvey changes the character’s stride to the two-legged variety, the fantastical creature looks mundane, but Wood keeps the character unpredictable.
Aliza Azarian, as Ariel, has a true sprite’s bounce and energy. Nick Wheeler plays the jester Trinculo with a keen comic touch, nailing both the bawdy gags and the sly humor. As the spirits, Case Phinney, Emily Harvey Lacroix and Marissa Mattogno are effervescent little forces spreading music, movement and surprise.
Cora Fauser’s costumes are the play’s biggest visual statement, portraying a wide range of beings, from the fishy Caliban to the sharp-dressed nobles to the regal Prospero and ethereal Ariel.
The Tempest is built of illusions, a neat parallel to the artifice of theater itself. In this production, the emphasis is not on big spectacle but on a gentle kind of fantasy expressed with music and movement. The show’s large cast showers us with the lasting beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry, a true gift. And there’s magic, always, in hearing Prospero reflect, “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Blithe Spirits | Theater review: The Tempest, Lost Nation Theater”
This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2024.
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