"The Tempest" Oxford Playhouse

This review was written for Daily Info, and appears on their website.

Perhaps I should stop reading programmes. But no! They are the places where you can find out who’s acting what role, and what else they’ve been in (which shouldn’t be interesting but for some reason is, like looking in someone else's shopping trolley). Plus it’s always fun to check in on the list of charitable patrons. The trouble starts if the director has decided to offer a mission statement, their vision for the production we’re about to see. That statement is intended to guide the audience’s perception of the show, to clarify the artistic interpretation of the text.

Bad idea.

It’s a bad idea for two reasons: 1) any production worth its salt shouldn’t need to be explained in advance. It should speak for itself, bold and clear. And 2) it invites the reader to judge the play they are about to watch against the claims made in the programme. In this case those claims include, for example, that making Prospero female ‘explores the moral complexity of humankind, and how changing the gender of the protagonist facilitates a presentation of this duality’. That might have been the intention, but what we got on the night was, well, just a female Prospera. (And that particular casting decision, presented in the programme as a ‘key choice’ of the production, is hardly original or challenging. Down the road in Stratford right now Alex Kingston is knocking out her Prospero every night, and actors as prominent as Helen Mirren and Tilda Swinton have done the same thing in recent years. In fact, in a world where gender-casting in Shakespeare is nowadays generally blind, making a point of this one inversion feels if anything somewhat hackneyed.)

Other irksome elements in the programme include the dramaturg describing Prospera in this production as being ‘a pregnant woman expelled from her home country’, when she clearly tells Miranda that she was a child at the time they left Milan. There’s also a double-page spread all about the ecological design philosophy matching the theme of environmental despoliation in the play, with pictures of costumes made from discarded towelling, and steaming spinach producing natural dye. That would be great, but what is the point when none of it is remotely evident from what the audience sees, or even senses, during the performance?

But perhaps my biggest programme-based gripe is the inclusion of a synopsis. Why do we need a synopsis? This play is written in modern English. If anyone in the audience is new to it, they might not pick up the meaning of every word, but the one thing they will definitely grasp is the plot. By including a synopsis you take away from them one of the most important ingredients of any enjoyable theatrical experience: the story. And to add insult to injury, this particular synopsis doesn’t even match what happens on the stage: it claims, for example, that Stephano and Trinculo are hounded by dogs, that Ariel appears dressed as a harpy, and that Ferdinand is ‘captured’ by Prospera and forced to carry wood in Act One. None of that happens.

There is one thing, however, heralded in the programme that turns out to be the saving grace of this particular production. As Director Costi Levy says, ‘We chose to bring Sycorax, and with her the natural magic of the island, out of the subtext and onto the stage’. That’s an interesting and visually enhancing concept. As Sycorax, (the witch-like previous ruler of the island and mother of Caliban) a group of ensemble actors hover around the fringes of the set throughout the performance, spying on the action, twitching with excitement, and occasionally stepping forward and taking over. This adds considerable kinetic energy to what is otherwise a largely static rendition of The Tempest. But sadly, even with this lovely idea, confusion takes over at times. Sycorax is naturally opposed to Prospera, and yet, at certain points in the play, with no apparent complaint, the Sycoraxian team become the agents of Prospera’s plans: performing at the ‘revels’, ensnaring Trinculo and Stephano, and attacking the Italian nobles. While this looks good (especially the force-feeding, which is the play’s wildest and most action-packed scene), it doesn’t seem to fit with the idea of Sycorax as the spirit Prospera supplanted and evicted before enslaving her son.

There has been some wholesale cutting to the text, bringing this production in at just two hours (fifteen minutes shorter even than the advertised running time). Unfortunately the cutting is not only heavy but also pretty heavy-handed, meaning that towards the end some of the characters refer to events that took place in the original play but have been removed from this version. I do applaud the attempt to shorten it though. I often feel that The Tempest sags creakily in the middle, with the different groups of shipwrecked characters painstakingly making their way around the island as they inch ever closer to Prospera’s abode. But just cutting big chunks out without taking due consideration for what characters may say later is not helpful. Creative cutting (such as for example finding a way completely to dispense with, say, Stephano and Trinculo, and bringing Caliban over to accompany the Italian nobles) would be a way to lose text but add imagination. If you’re going to cut, cut boldly.

A word about performances. Everybody on that stage tonight knew how to deliver Shakespearean lines with clarity and sense. Isabelle Lever made Prospera a convincingly caring mother with historic problems to sort out. And it was refreshing to see the character freed from its usual excessive dominance and petulance. Even her treatment of Ariel bordered on the kindly. But (apart from those few action scenes) most of the performers were fairly rooted while speaking, which gave the show almost a tableau-esque atmosphere at times. The two exceptions to this were Molly Jones as Miranda and Alfred Dry as Trinculo, both of whom seemed to have cut their marionette strings, and brought their parts to life with joy and humour.

Izzy Kori's design was a genuine thrill to behold. The action is framed by gigantic shapes with a plant-like but distinctly malevolent mood, and there are two massive piles of compost downstage, giving the characters natural positions of authority to look down from. It felt alive. Lighting and sound effects were also dramatic and thrilling. This island certainly was full of strange noises, and it felt like a suitably alien environment for the European castaways.

As a whole, this Tempest aimed high, but I feel its creators may have seen more in it than was visible from row K in the stalls. I yearn for original, experimental Shakespeare productions. If you can’t do them at university, then you can’t do them anywhere. This one dipped its toe in the sea of possibilities, but sadly never got really wet.