Shakespeare Festival's 'Tempest'

Breaking the staff

ROBERT ZALLER

If The Tempest is not Shakespeare’s last play, it is certainly his leave-taking from the stage. In many ways it is a rehearsal of some of his most familiar plot devices: the absent or exiled prince who bides his time while misgovernment flourishes and finally sets the political and social order to rights; the father preoccupied with a nubile daughter; the star-crossed lovers whose elders are at odds. What sets it apart, other than its exotic setting and its Faustian preoccupation with magic, is the character of its principal figure, Prospero, and his two servants and “subjects,” the sprite Ariel and the savage Caliban.

Prospero is a Renaissance magus whose servants symbolize his powers over both the heavens and the earth, though these are, apart from his magical staff, exercised only through them. He is also, manifestly, Shakespeare the playwright himself, whose verbal lightnings and conjurings are realized through the medium of his actors, and whose staff is his pen. Prospero’s Milan is the world, with all its cares and responsibilities; his island is a private stage on which he can perform the acts of power without suffering those of consequence. When, at the play’s end, he returns to his duchy, it is with the heavy heart of one whose “Every third thought shall be my grave”—that is, as one who has left the timeless world of his art for the mortal field of strife and rule. Prospero returns to Milan, in short, to die, as Shakespeare did to his Stratford.

If Prospero contains familiar Shakespearean elements, Ariel and Caliban are among his most extraordinarily original creations. Ariel is the agent and conduit of Prospero’s white magic, but “she” (if we must give her a sex) is simultaneously a symbol of unconditioned freedom and, performing his tasks, his prisoner. Caliban, in contrast, is the degraded savage who cannot do without a master and yet, anarchically dangerous, hates his servitude and dependency. In a political sense, the two represent the extremes of what both in individual nature and in the general polity must be allowed scope but must be ultimately governed: virtue and appetite.

There are other roles to bring off if The Tempest is to play well, notably the young lovers Ferdinand and Miranda, who recreate Eden on Prospero’s otherwise problematic isle. But it is Prospero and his servants who must succeed above all. Greg Almquist’s Prospero is a troubled figure, given to gusts of temper and woe, and, in his (self?) enforced solitude, to occasional notes of tyranny. His ultimate mission is reconciliation, however, and magnanimity will win out in the end. If this Prospero shows his human side more, that is all to the good, though it comes at the expense of his tragic dimension: It is the kind of choice one must often make in Shakespeare, for example in playing Hamlet.

Birgit Huppuch’s Ariel is a bit on the earthy side too, and there’s a hint of Broadway twang in her songs, but she plays her role with great mettle and energy. She has a bravura moment at the beginning where director Carmen Khan has her rock a toy boat to mimic the tempest that casts the usurper Antonio and his company on the island, and two very exquisite ones later on: first, where after demanding her freedom she asks Prospero whether he loves her; and, second, when she casts a last look of fierce loyalty at him before reclaiming it. The latter moment, in particular, is the kind of inspired gesture only a very fine actress can offer us: It sums up in a flash the poignancy of a partly humanized consciousness as it resumes its original instinctual nature. Ariel, too, must drown her book.

The delight of the production, though, is John Zak’s Caliban. Shaven, white-chalked, red-eyed, and nearly nude, he is physically fascinating and repulsive at the same time, suggesting both the changeling Renaissance courtier, eager to do any master’s bidding yet deeply resentful of his servitude, and the bowed but still vindictive serpent of Eden. He is also the underside of Prospero, for he himself has been dispossessed of his isle, and has the same grievance against the exiled Duke that the Duke has against Antonio. When Prospero finally recognizes a kind of claim in Caliban-- “this thing of darkness I/ Acknowledge mine”— he admits both a share in his nature and a quasi-paternal obligation. Caliban is us, and he is heir to our estate as we in our humanity partake of all that is lowest and most deformed in him.

The rest of the players may be dealt with more summarily. Ferdinand (David Raphaely) and Miranda (Elizabeth Mugavero) are, respectively, too callow and too earthbound to make Shakespeare’s music come alive between them; Brian McCann’s Stephano mugs a good deal in a show that is not his to steal. Antonio, Alonso, and the rest, in their stiff 18th-Century costumes, seem mostly out of place, and none suggests a strong profile. This Tempest is, in short, a mixed bag, but if far short of ideal, its virtues outweigh its flaws. Certainly its Ariel and particularly its Caliban—a Barrymore performance if this season has produced one—are worth the price of admission.