Synopsis Prospero, Duke of Milan, his dukedom usurped by his brother Antonio, is put to sea with his daughter Miranda and some magical books smuggled in by his loyal councillor Gonzalo. The sea casts them up on an island where Prospero, exercising his magical powers, makes a home for himself and Miranda. One day a great storm, which Prospero has conjured, breaks up a passing ship and delivers to him the members of his usurping court. Treacherous brother, fellow conspirators and old friend alike come under Prospero's spell. Shakespeare's last play.
Patrick Stewart plays Prospero in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s transfer of The Tempest, which opened at the Novello Theatre last Wednesday - 28 February 2007 (previews from 22 February) - for a run to 24 March 2007 as part of the company’s West End winter residency (See News, 25 Aug 2006). The cast also features Critics Circle best newcomer and Ian Charleson winner Mariah Gale as Miranda, as well as Julian Bleach (Ariel), Finbar Lynch (Alonso) and John Light (Caliban). Headlong artistic director Rupert Goold directs the production, which has been transported to an arctic wasteland in Giles Cadle’s set.
Overnight critics were unanimous in their praise of the production, and in particular the central performance of Stewart as Prospero, who, they said, displayed a range of emotions from rage and despair to joy, and was deeply moving. They were also impressed with the other members of the company, and found Goold's interpretation to be very inventive, despite veering towards the flashy and unbelievable at times.
Maxwell Cooter on Whatsonstage.com (4 stars) – "The opening storm scene is one of the best I’ve seen - I was almost feeling seasick myself.... there’s a genuine poignancy at the close, Stewart almost choking back a sob on 'drown my book'. The most compelling feature of the production, however, is Julian Bleach’s astonishing Ariel. Looking like a cross between Johnny Rotten and Gormenghast’s Steerpike, he presents himself as a much more commanding spirit than is usual – indeed they are moments in his scenes with Prospero where we’re not quite sure who is the master and who the servant – quite telling in a play where the notion of power is illusory. There’s an equally good performancefrom Mariah Gale as a gauche Miranda, the first time I’ve ever seen an actor treat the character for what she is: an awkward and naïve 15-year-old.... This is an imaginative, visually stunning, provocative production.... there are some disappointments: the granting of Ariel’s freedom seems almost an afterthought, the Stephano/Trinculo interludes left me completely cold, and theirs and Caliban’s putative revolt seemed to belong to another play altogether. But the plusses far outweigh the minuses: this is a Tempest like no other."
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph –“Goold's RSC staging is so exciting, his vision of the play so powerfully emotional…. The opening storm sequence, sombrely announced by the BBC shipping forecast and then observed through a porthole, is staged as a bravura piece of physical theatre, with spewing, dinner-jacketed toffs and rough mariners buffeted violently about in a tiny ship's radio room…. The production's chief glory, though, is Patrick Stewart's magnificent Prospero. He plays the role with tremendous power and depth of feeling, and delivers the beautiful verse with superb authority…. Stewart chillingly captures the bitterness and cruelty that consume Prospero, so easily wrongly played as little more than a wise, slightly testy old conjuror…. Mariah Gale's disconcerting Miranda, for all Prospero's protestations of love, has a subservient, automaton-like quality that has surely been brought on by her father's authoritarian nature…. there is a tremendous sense in Stewart's performance of an icy heart that cracks even as it begins to melt. It's painful - you sense that once Prospero has returned home and seen his daughter married, this suddenly lonely old man won't live much longer, but, as with the redemption of Lear, it's a cost that is absolutely worth paying.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (4 stars) – “The contrary staging works wonders. Giles Cadle's painterly set, with its snow-fall, icy tracts of land, slate-grey skies and angry winds, reflects the frozen state of Prospero's heart and mind…. Stewart, tattoos on bald head, kitted out in furs and what resembles an animal skeleton, makes Prospero a master of cruelty and violence. He keeps John Light's much improved, shaggy Caliban, with his air of resentful confusion, shackled like a dangerous dog. He battles hard and furiously with himself not just to surrender the island but to discover in himself the virtue of forgiveness…. Some weaknesses remain. The drunken butler and jester are played for dull farce. Nick Court's wooden Ferdinand and Maria Gale's glazed, doll-like Miranda, who suffer weird oriental, pre-nuptial rituals instead of that marriage masque, make dreary lovers. Yet from a terrific opening scene of shipwreck, heralded by a shipping forecast of hurricanes, with below-deck, peep-hole views of alarm, Goold's Tempest makes real theatrical magic.”
Sam Marlowe in the Times (4 stars) –"Giles Cadle’s designs have the jagged elemental quality of a Beuys sculpture — but he and Goold lash the harsh power of their icy wilderness to a lush theatricality. The opening, in which we hear an ominous shipping forecast and glimpse the tempest-tossed courtiers through a porthole, is wonderfully inventive.... The ruler of this inhospitable realm is Patrick Stewart’s mesmerising Prospero.... Stewart gives a rivetingly complex performance.... he is an intensely touching father who, dabbing a moistened handkerchief to the cheek of his daughter, Mariah Gale’s witty, wondering Miranda, tenderly prepares her for her first encounter with Ferdinand. He is also despotic, and capable of childish spite... Finally... he is desperately moving..... The production as a whole is a serious enchantment, as capable of warming the heart and the intellect as of freezing the marrow."
Most modern productions of this play tend to see it as either a text about colonialism or as a treatise on nature and illusion. Rupert Goold’s dark production seems to come from another place altogether. His Paradise Lost last year suggested that here was a startlingly original director and here, together with designer Giles Cadle, he’s a created a strange and unsettling world: half gothic nightmare and half Nordic myth.
The opening storm scene is one of the best I’ve seen - I was almost feeling seasick myself – and we’re quickly transported not to a tropical island but to a frozen wasteland (and let’s skip over how a ship sailing from Tunis to Naples appears to have ended up in the Bering Sea).
We first see Patrick Stewart’s Prospero as a shamanic figure calling up the storm, but it’s soon apparent this is no tyrannical figure. In one instance, here he’s more pedagogic: his explanation to Miranda of who she is seems more like a school lesson. He tenderly prepares Miranda for her first meeting with Ferdinand by cleaning her face, like a doting mother. And there’s a genuine poignancy at the close, Stewart almost choking back a sob on “drown my book”.
The most compelling feature of the production, however, is Julian Bleach’s astonishing Ariel. Looking like a cross between Johnny Rotten and Gormenghast’s Steerpike, he presents himself as a much more commanding spirit than is usual – indeed they are moments in his scenes with Prospero where we’re not quite sure who is the master and who the servant – quite telling in a play where the notion of power is illusory.
There’s an equally good performance from Mariah Gale as a gauche Miranda, the first time I’ve ever seen an actor treat the character for what she is: an awkward and naïve 15-year-old. There’s a touching simplicity about the way that she deals with the sudden discovery of a world beyond her island.
This is an imaginative, visually stunning, provocative production but there are some disappointments: the granting of Ariel’s freedom seems almost an afterthought, the Stephano/Trinculo interludes left me completely cold, and theirs and Caliban’s putative revolt seemed to belong to another play altogether. But the plusses far outweigh the minuses: this is a Tempest like no other.
- Maxwell Cooter
Note: The following FOUR-STAR review dates from August 2006 and this production's original run at the RSC.
There’s not much warmth in The Tempest - an idea at the chilly heart of director Rupert Goold's highly idiosyncratic production which is apparently located somewhere in the Artic Circle.
When the surly magus, having abated the storm he has raised, returns back inside his log cabin clad in shamanic furs, snow falling through the darkness, I half expected him to turn and cry: "And it ain't a night fit for neither man nor beast", pace W C Fields in That Fatal Glass of Beer.
Happily, while this production is undoubtedly odd - its relocation belies much of the descriptive references and could irk the more literal-minded - it is fresh, often brilliantly inventive visually, and features in Patrick Stewart a Prospero fully capable of doing justice to the Bard's late verse.
But it is Julian Bleach's brilliant re-imagining of Ariel which is destined to live longest in the mind. He is no "delicate" spirit of light and grace, but a malignant thing, whose spectral form stalks the stage like Nosterferatu and who emerges menacingly from the most unexpected of places.
They key idea informing Goold's production seems to be that Prospero, in making an island of himself through single-minded devotion to his studies and revenge, has created a world which mirrors himself in its unforgiving iciness. It is only at the end by embracing forgiveness and acknowledging Caliban's darkness to be his that he is able to enter fully into humanity.
Goold's Tempest teems with ideas and they can work to pull the play in different directions, creating a gallimaufry of individual scenes, rather than a consistent whole. But the strange sounds - and sights - which fill the production, offer delight.
Stewart, of course, has "art to enchant" aplenty, but seems milder than the production requires until the last. Needless to say though, he goes down a storm.
Anyone having preconceived ideas about the location of Prospero's magic island should forget them before going to see this latest RSC production of the play, directed by Rupert Goold.
Hints that we might not be going to visit the more usual Mediterranean island were contained in the map on the curtain hiding the stage before the show, which actually depicted the Arctic, and, when we eventually saw Prospero's home, it was a weather-beaten log cabin situated amidst the seemingly limitless frozen wastes of Giles Cadle's superb set - a brilliant exercise in perspective.
Purists may cringe in horror, or pedants complain that a ship journeying from Africa to Italy is unlikely to end up in the Bering Strait, but there is no need to. The unusual location did no disservice whatsoever to the play – indeed in some respects it cast a new and fascinating light on it – and we were, after all, seeing not only a magic island but also a storm that, conjured up as it was by Ariel at Prospero's bidding, could well have had unusual effects!
Even before this truly unique setting for the piece was revealed, we had seen as exciting a version of the storm scene as I have witnessed in nine productions. Painted on the curtain along with the map was a large ship's radio, and the show began with a shipping forecast (in true BBC style) which reported the approaching storm. And we scarcely had time to marvel at the dazzling – and greatly daring – ingenuity of this before the radio's speaker was transformed into the porthole of the ship, revealing the mariners being tossed around on the bridge and the invasions of the frightened passengers, who were in evening dress.
There was much more to this production, though, than a stunning design and an exciting staging, for these were combined with fine performances. Mariah Gale gave Miranda exactly the combination of innocence and gawkiness you would expect in a girl of her age who had been brought up in isolation from the world, Ken Bones was as chilling and unrepentant an Antonio as you will ever see and Finbar Lynch's Alonso was so engrossed by his grief over the apparent loss of Ferdinand that he spent much of the play oblivious both to what was happening around him and the extreme harshness of his environment.
The most outstanding portrayals, however, were those of Julian Bleach, as a white-faced Gothic spirit, clothed in black, who might well have come from the underworld rather than the air above and of whom even Prospero was at times a little afraid, and Patrick Stewart as Prospero himself, whose arduous exile seemed to have caused him to become so eaten up by his desire for revenge that, after he had achieved it, he seemed to lose all his self-belief and who, after he had spoken the play's closing words, still held us in thrall with an almost unbearably long, and silent, appeal for our support.
- Janet Polson
22 Mar 07
Either I'm getting the hang of Shakespeare or this is an exceptionally clear and accessible production of The Tempest, ideal for the large number of school parties who gave this a rapturous reception at yesterday's matinee. Much of the attention has gone to the decision to stage this on an icy wasteland rather than a Mediterranean island. In fact there aren't too many clashes with the text and the design fits well with Rupert Goold's imaginative direction. The RSC ensemble are in their usual superb form and Patrick Stewart seems happy to be part of a company performance, although Prospero's closing speech proves that he is an exceptional interpreter of Shakespeare's verse. Unfortunately an otherwise excellent production was spoilt by the most excruciatingly uncomfortable seats I have ever had the misfortune to endure; anyone over five feet tall or with back problems should avoid the Novello like the plague until Cameron MacKintosh does something about these ergonomic death traps. David Baxter (14.3.07) - David Baxter
15 Mar 07
Going to a Shakespeare play is sometimes less than stimulating: you usually know what's coming. Going to a RSC production of a Shakespeare play is often rewardingly comfortable: elements of their 'house' style are always there.
This production is different.
Amazingly imaginative, constantly stimulating, delightfully inventive -- and good performances to boot. The matinee I attended had large numbers of young people present who laughed (and nearly always at the right places) and were completely engaged, as was I. Heartily recommended. - Lorna Dodd
07 Mar 07
I was there when, amid tingling excitement and expectation, Zoe Wanamaker brought down her staff with a resounding thump to the stage floor of the newly opened Globe Theatre and cried: “O for a muse of fire ...” to launch Henry V. I laughed with the Groundlings when Mark Rylance led his fellow actors through a delightful Twelfth Night. I marvelled at Antony Cher’s Macbeth. I was entranced by Michael Gambon’s Henry IV Parts One and Two. I was absorbed by Kevin Spacey’s Richard II. My jaw dropped at Adrian Lester’s Hamlet. I delighted in As You Like It with Sienna Miller and Helen McCrory and I was thrilled by the physical spectacle of last season’s Titus Andronicus at the Globe with Douglas Hodge.
These are just some of the Shakespearean highlights that have offered high rewards over the past few years. And what, I wondered, would the RSC deliver with The Tempest, an obviously difficult play to stage considering the demands for storms at sea, magical events and a major character, Ariel, who is of the spirit world and invisible to all but Prospero? The answer is: an abysmal mess.
Certainly, the opening scenes of the victims in their storm-tossed ship were very effectively presented - almost like being in a cinema, though I would wager that, in all the uproar, few in the audience could have made out many of the words. This gave way to the next scene of Patrick Stewart’s Prospero standing before a smoking brazier and making a demented wailing noise as though he had stomach pains from something cooked in its flames. He was wearing the most ludicrous outfit - his magic cloak - formed from the remains of some dead, unidentifiable animal. Thankfully, he soon discarded it, hanging it up on a wall hook, like some old raincoat.
He is joined by Miranda, played, it says in my programme, by Marian Gale, though I could not recognise her from the programme photo. This Miranda is a total wimp with a high-pitched voice and a tendency to throw off the odd line rapidly with a petulant stamp of her foot, evoking inappropriate laughter from sections of the audience. Her performance put me in mind of a school play where you feel like groaning at what is going on before you, but hasten to remind yourself that the little darlings are doing their best.
She is put to sleep by Prospero (thankfully, but only temporarily), heralding the entrance of Ariel, created by Shakespeare as a spirit of the air, wild and free, untainted by any form of earthiness or earth-bound humanity. However, what emerges on the stage, laughably from the brazier of all places, is a creature very much akin to the Monster portrayed by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein. Ashen-faced, hair standing on end, staring eyes and a plodding gait, only the bolt through the neck is missing. Er, excuse me, isn’t Ariel supposed to be a light and nimble spirit of the air?
We are dragged on to the point where Ferdinand, played by Nick Court, declares his undying love and passion for Miranda. A more total lack of chemistry between two supposed lovers is hard to imagine. She stands there like a fashion disaster, dressed in some bizarre outfit complete with boot-style trainers, resembling a displaced fraulein from the Sound of Music, and listens as the declarartion is presented to her with all the emotion and passion of someone reading a Gordon Brown speech.
The scenes with Trinculo, Stephano and Caliban are effec tive and amusing. Then comes the banquet scene. This is how Shakespeare saw it: the King and his followers, weary, footsore and very hungry, are suddenly and miraculously presented with a mouth-watering banquet, created by Prospero’s magic. In this production, a huge, grey, lump of plastic, presumably supposed to be a fish, or dolphin, but looking more like a giant slug, is dragged across the stage on a sledge and abandoned before the amazed royal party. How they could even contemplate tucking in to this grisly object is hard to imagine, but they start to do so. Immediately, Boris - er, sorry, Ariel, springs through a flapin the carcass and gives an astonishing Edward Scissorhands impression, berating the stupefied onlookers for their treatment of Prospero.
I can’t tell you how the play progressed after that because, thankfully, the interval came, and I was able to make a grateful escape from the theatre. I was sorry I could not stay to watch Patrick Stewart deliver the “Our revels now are ended” speech and Prospero’s farewell to his art at the end. Stewart is an adequate performer and, I am sure, would have offered a worthwhile performance. But the laughable and amateurish production going on around him was, like the giant slug, too much to stomach. On top of which, the gross discomfort of my expensive stalls seat at the Novello Theatre was such that a further hour or so of physical as well as mental torment was simply too much to contemplate.
This was the first time I had ever walked out from a Shakespeare production and was possibly my worst-ever evening at a theatre. And, to add salt to the wounds, I had to pay Livingstone’s £8 I Hate Cars Tax just to get there.
- Escalus
28 Feb 07
I saw this show twice when the RSC traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan. As soon as it started I knew I wanted to see it again. The music, the atmosphere, the show itself is a joy to behold. This show does not disappoint. - 141.214.17.5)
Opened 22 May 1905, originally the Waldorf, became the Strand in 1909 and the Whitney in 1911, back to the Strand in 1915. On 8 Oct 1940 the theatre was hit during a bombing raid - the show went on! There had been an earlier Strand Theatre where the Aldwych tube station now is that opened in 1832. 1061 seats. Member of the Society of London Theatre. On 25 March 2003 Delfont Mackintosh Theatres Limited, which had owned the freehold of the theatre since 1991, took over the management of the Strand from the Louis I Michaels Ltd Group of Companies when their lease expired. Delfont Mackintosh is now planning a 1.5 million refurbishment programme to restore the theatre to its former glory. May 2005 opened as Novello Theatre.
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