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by William Shakespeare, directed by Des McAnuff

Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford

June 25-September 12, 2010

“Do not infest your mind with beating on

The strangeness of this business” (Act V)

For many people seeing Christopher Plummer in the role of Prospero in “The Tempest” will be all the justification they need to attend the show.  If seeing a famous person on stage is your only goal, then you will have to be satisfied.  If, however, you also hope to see a good production of Shakespeare’s play, you will be bitterly disappointed.  Plummer does not make as strong an impression as he did in “Caesar and Cleopatra” in 2008, because director Des McAnuff displays little knowledge of what Shakespeare’s play is about and therefore gives it almost no narrative drive.  He thus turns a profound play into a tedious slog.

McAnuff is hardly alone in failing to understand “The Tempest”.  None of the productions at Stratford since 1982 have got to the core of what motivates the action, though most have not been quite as superficial and boring as McAnuff’s production.  Most directors faced with the prospect of putting a magic isle on stage become so distract with that task they forget to make clear why Prospero has bothered to shipwreck his enemies on his island.  If only they would follow Prospero’s advice to Alonso quoted above, they would focus more on the narrative and less on special effects.  Prospero’s discussion with Ariel at the beginning of Act 5 provides the key.  Ariel tells his master that his enemies are now “distracted” and those not mad are mourning over them”.  This provokes pity in Ariel which shames Prospero: “Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not myself ...be kindlier moved than thou art?”  Noting this he concludes that “the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent. The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further.”  The themes of usurpation and revenge link the play to all of Shakespeare’s others whether history (“Henry IV”), comedy (“As You Like It”) or tragedy (“Hamlet”). 

Under McAnuff’s direction Prospero’s motivation does not come across at all.  Falling back on his own devices, Plummer does not so much play Prospero as the Grand Actor who happens to be on stage speaking Prospero’s lines.  But without motivation or a sense of character, the lines themselves fall apart.  Plummer’s reading of Prospero’s long expository speech of Act 1 is so full of strange pauses and emphases that the background to the action remains totally unclear.  As is usual at Stratford, Plummer’s Prospero ignores Prospero’s clear statement to Ferdinand, “Sir, I am vexed; Bear with my weakness; my brain is troubled,” and delivers the famous speech which precedes it, “Our revels now are ended,” in perfect calm.  McAnuff, like all previous Stratford directors, are so fixated on the bogus notion that this speech is Shakespeare's “farewell to the stage” they forget that it has an immediate context in the play.  Prospero, as he says, ends the wedding masque for Ferdinand and Miranda because it has just occurred to him that he has forgotten about the plot of Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban to take his life.  His famous speech reveals Prospero’s anger that he he not as fully in control of all events as he would like to think and thus downplays in this moment of vexation of the importance of his magic theatre.  Even in the Epilogue where Prospero bids farewell to the audience, Plummer makes little sense of Shakespeare’s knotty lines.  People may praise his resonant voice and mellifluous delivery and be pleased to see him so full of life at age 80, but if Plummer does not convey Prospero’s character or the meaning of his lines, his skill goes for naught.

Meanwhile, McAnuff infests his mind with the strangeness of the story to the exclusion of all else.  Since there is no plot to follow, the play turns into a series of magic tricks and special effects.  Prospero’s cloak crackles with blinking lights when doffed or donned.  Ferdinand’s sword seems to orbit his body.  Prospero, for no particular reason, rises from the trap apparently sitting in mid air.

Costume designer Paul Tazewell is as little interested in the text as McAnuff.  It’s fine to dress the petite Julyana Soelistyo’s Ariel the the blue-skinned bodysuit of a Smurf, but to make Dion Johnstone’s Caliban look like lizard complete with spiky backbone is a mistake.  Prospero repeated calls Caliban “misshapen” and “not honour’d with a human shape”.  Tazewell takes Prospero at his word, but to do so ignores the themes of prejudice and colonization in the play.  Colonizers often referred to the original inhabitants of a country as less than human.  An irony of the play that thus goes missing is that just as Prospero’s brother has usurped rule of Milan, so has Prospero usurped rule of the island.  It further confuses matters that the spirits Prospero summons, called “Shapes” in the text, Tazewell dresses as more Calibans.  These spirits should be quite distinct from him.  Tazewell follows the Stratford tradition in garbed Prospero and Miranda in ragged garments.  But if Prospero is able to save garments of an entire boatful of people with “not a blemish But fresher than before”, how it is that he has not performed the same feat for what he and Miranda wear daily?

His mind so preoccupied with theatrical effects, McAnuff seems to let the actors work out what their lines mean themselves.  Some are good at it.  Others are not.  The best speaker of verse in the entire show is James Blendick as Prospero’s former trusted advisor Gonzalo.  When he declaims his well-know speech about the ideal commonwealth, you wish that the others could bring such clarity and authority to their lines.  Trish Lindström is a very different Miranda than usual, more active, more robust, which rather suits a young woman who has lived in nature for twelve of her fifteen years.  Lindström obviously does not look like a 15-year-old, but the 80-year-old Plummer would be more believable as her grandfather than father.  (Stratford has always assumed Prospero is ancient in spite of his daughter’s age.)  Also excellent is Julyana Soelistyo as Ariel, her odd yet clear speech patterns seeming appropriate for a spirit of the air.

Dion Johnstone would make a fine Caliban if his costume were not so distracting, and McAnuff seems intent on undermining whatever Gareth Potter’s Ferdinand says by focussing like an adolescent on the log he carries as a phallic object.  Needless to say, this lends an air of bawdiness to the Ferdinand-Miranda relationship that should remain in Prospero’s imagination.  Geraint Wyn Davies and Bruce Dow continue the unfortunate Stratford tradition of having Stephano and Trinculo appear so raving drunk from the very beginning that their characters have nowhere to go.  While Wyn Davies’ Stephano seems to be identical to his Bottom of last year, Dow’s Trinculo seems to be channeling Paul Lynde and his most effeminate.  John Vickery as Antonio and Timothy D. Stickney as Sebastian make such a complete hash of their lines that we have no idea what their unscrupulous plans are about.  But then Peter Hutt as Alonso does no better and making sense of what he says.   

    

This production along with his “As You Like It” this season helps cement McAnuff’s reputation as a director interested only in the external theatricality of a Shakespeare play, whether appropriate or not, unable to clarify its plot much less the lines the actors speak.    McAnuff’s direction is all about smoke and mirrors since, without knowing how to make Shakespeare’s words come alive, he can create no magic. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Julyana Soelistyo and Christopher Plummer. ©David Hou