Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
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by William Shakespeare, directed by Antoni Cimolino
Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford
May 28-October 28, 2018
Prospero: “The rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance”
For the first time the Stratford Festival is staging The Tempest with a female Prospero. This is not a new idea. It follows Vanessa Redgrave’s portrayal of the role at Shakespeare’s Globe in London in 2000 and Helen Mirren’s portrayal in Julie Taymor’s 2010 film version. The major advantage for Stratford Festival goers is that they have the chance to see Martha Henry, the only female actor in Canada with sufficient experience and vocal authority, take on one of the greatest roles in Shakespeare. As the production amply demonstrates the play works just as well with a female as with a male Prospero and it is hard to imagine Henry’s sensitivity to Shakespeare’s text being surpassed anytime in the near future.
The production directed by Antoni Cimolino is otherwise conservative. He does not try to foist some outlandish concept onto Shakespeare’s play and, unlike too many directors, he does not allow the special effects for Prospero’s and Ariel’s magic to dominate the text. Instead, Cimolino presents a very close reading of the text that illustrates, unlike far too many productions, that the play is not about Prospero’s spectacular revenge on his enemies, but rather just the opposite.
Cimolino’s close reading of the text would go nowhere if he did not have a cast who could speak it with full understanding. As it happens the cast for The Tempest is particularly starry, filled with actors adept at clearly conveying the meaning of Shakespeare’s words.
Chief of these, of course, is Henry herself. It is a delight in itself to hear her speak words written 400 years ago with such understanding. She takes Prospero’s long speech at the beginning quite slowly but the effect is to make the circumstances leading Prospero’s exile clearer than ever. Henry’s is not a Prospero livid with rage at what has been done to her, but rather a bookish woman who proceeds with cool deliberateness in punishing her enemies.
Henry has retained her habit, present since at least her Mary Tyrone of 1994, of frequently touching the face and clothing of her interlocutors. While this appears as a tic, Henry does use it to give meaning to Prospero’s actions. In the beginning, only those Prospero loves – Miranda, Ariel, Frederick – receive this treatment. At the end, however, when Ariel’s example has taught her the greater value of mercy and forgiveness, she touches those who were once her arch-enemies, including Caliban, lending greater emotion to Prospero’s most important admission.
Michael Blake’s Caliban is not as nasty as some Calibans have been. He speaks verse so well, he can be clearly understood even in the drinking scene. He brings out the beauty in the speech “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises” that shows Caliban has more appreciation for the island than any other character. Blake gives Caliban a satisfying reaction of surprise and gratitude to Prospero’s sudden kindness at the end. We feel she has seen through her abuse of him and he though his own abuse of her.
Ariel is the most important role André Morin has yet played at the Festival and he gives a stunningly assured account of it. When speaking or singing Morin has Ariel glance beyond or through the material world around him as if to the other reality where he is home. In that Morin shows that Ariel is bound to Prospero by no greater allegiance that her spells. Morin’s quickness of movement and speech enhance the airy otherness of his spirit nature.
As Miranda, Mamie Zwettler stands out from the cast in a negative way for her use of an uninflected voice and colloquial diction that become wearing to listen to. In contrast, Sébastien Heins’s Ferdinand speaks in warm, rounded tones that are a token of his his character’s inherent nobility.
Among the court party, seldom has Alonso’s grief over the supposed death of his son Ferdinand been portrayed more movingly than by David Collins, whose character seems paralyzed by depression. Rod Beattie is well cast as the kindly but pedantic Gonzalo, who fails to see what others find so humorous about him.
Graham Abbey and André Sills are a fine pair of villains. Abbey well plays the more quick-witted and maleficent Antonio, who has to convince Sills’s slower-witted, but less inherently evil Sebastian to do harm.
Tom McCamus and Stephen Ouimette are a treat as the clowns Stephano and Trinculo. The two played Vladimir and Estragon at Stratford in 1996 and they both lend their Shakespearean roles the same air of the absurd as they did in Beckett. Thus, rather than a series of hackneyed drunken episodes, their scenes come across as eerily modern.
Designer Bretta Gerecke has kept the play’s setting in the 17th century, but she has made some odd choices. Her costume for Ariel makes him looks as if he were covered with brown bark, perhaps a reference to his having been trapped inside a tree, but it is certainly the heaviest-looking costume I have ever seen for what is meant to be a spirit of the air. Her costume for Caliban, encrusting one arm and some of his face with sea shells tends to make him look more like a spirit of the ocean rather than the earth. The trains she gives to the gowns of the goddesses Ceres and Iris are so long they cover the entire stage and thus tend to look more ridiculous than impressive.
Overall, this is a Tempest that is primarily reflective rather than one filled with violent emotion. It is imbued with the feeling of the end of things – the end of hatred, the end of revenge, the end of magic. Cimolino turns Prospero’s divesting herself of her magic into a moving ceremony. He seems to cast The Tempest in the mold of Twelfth Night, where at the end excess in meanness, romance and folly give way to the reality of the everyday. If you have always thought of The Tempest as an enigma, this production may the one that shows you how beautifully the play make sense.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Martha Henry as Prospero; André Morin as Ariel; Stephen Ouimette as Trinculo, Tom McCamus as Stephano and Michael Blake as Caliban. ©2018 David Hou.
For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.
2018-08-15
The Tempest