The Tempest at Jones Playhouse
Last night I saw the first production of The Tempest I've ever seen, at the UW's renovated and renamed Jones Playhouse. I'm guessing the choice of this play as the post-renovation debut at the Playhouse was deliberate, since it made full use of the new catwalks, trapdoors, lifts, and other technical and mechanical features. It's a small, intimate theater, with a thrust stage instead of a proscenium arch.
The stage was a swoop of blue that was faintly filigreed with silver patterns that suggest a Renaissance celestial map. It looked like an abstract towering ocean wave, except with a window cut into its upper curve, with a tree branch growing through -- so that part was a bit of sky perhaps. It also served as wall and slide at various points in the performance. The costuming ranged from contemporary to nineteenth-century to timeless (Caliban's black leather pants, also filigreed). Many of the male characters were played by women, including Alonso, Gonzalo, Antonio, the Boatswain, Trinculo, and Ariel (whose gender in the text is perhaps debatable?). The performances ranged in quality, with the woman playing Ariel perhaps being the standout, although I was also impressed with Alonso and Trinculo. The performance of Prospero was a little harder to judge, for reasons I'll get to.
I went to the show because I wanted to get a better sense of the play, which I had only read before. It really did help a lot to see it staged, although it also really helped to have read the play (and the critical analysis in the introduction to the edition I have) before I saw this performance. I always had a sense of what was being said even when I couldn't make out the words. As usual, seeing the characters interact physically really helped me understand all the relationships better, and I also got a much stronger sense of the use of magic in the story than I had gotten from reading the text. That may have been the biggest eye-opener in a lot of ways.
Some of my gut impressions from my most recent reading were given support, even though I had begun to doubt them after reading further commentary by others. The young lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand, came off as superficial and slight. This could have been a performance problem, because I didn't think either of the actors was very good with the language. Above all, Prospero came across as kind of an asshole. He shouts, he bellows, he manipulates, he abuses. The stentorian tones seemed like an interpretation, for which they found evidence in the text, but I'll be curious to see how other productions of the play might differ. Prospero was a very dark character in this version, and his conversion to a forgiving sort who resigns his awesome power was difficult to accept.
However, the one thing that his conversion hinged on was a scene that points to a major difference between my recent gut impressions and the impression I got from seeing the performance. I came away from my reading feeling that Ariel was a subservient little ass-kisser, but came away from the performance feeling that Ariel was the key to Prospero's conversion. It was played that way very deliberately, with an emphasis on the scene where Ariel reports on the torment of the castaways, particularly the tears of Gonzalo. I was surprised at how moving this speech of Ariel's was. I had completely missed it in my reading. Ariel's empathy melts Prospero's bitterness, and from there we move to his acts of forgiveness. The power of that pivotal scene was enough to make this transition seem at least initially understandable.
Over all, Ariel was a much more interesting character on the stage. I had also missed the brief show of rebellion fairly early in the play, which prompts Prospero to threats and to a barking expository lump about how he saved Ariel from captivity. There was also a terrific rendition of Ariel's own threatening speech to the castaways after the false feast, in which Ariel dropped from the catwalks in a black costume with bat wings and bat feet. The only problem with that scene was the electronic processing of Ariel's voice, which obscured the words.
Amongst the other characters, Alonso came across as more sympathetic than I anticipated (an emphasis on his mourning for his lost son and joy at the reunion), Gonzalo was more annoying (prating old fool), and Caliban perhaps less sympathetic. Not sure about that last, however. Caliban remains a captivating figure, but the buffoonish bellowing of this performance, at least, made him pretty annoying as well. (Interestingly, the actors playing Ariel and Caliban may have been husband and wife or family of some kind. They had the same last name.)
ron_drummond reports that he has mailed me a DVD of a BBC production from the '70s, so I'll probably watch that next. I'm also curious about Derek Jarman's film adaptation, which is apparently very idiosyncratic and moves scenes around. It should probably wait until I've seen another traditional adaptation. (No doubt it was reading about Jarman's movie that made me associate Tilda Swinton with Ariel, although alas, he didn't use her in this film in any role.)
The stage was a swoop of blue that was faintly filigreed with silver patterns that suggest a Renaissance celestial map. It looked like an abstract towering ocean wave, except with a window cut into its upper curve, with a tree branch growing through -- so that part was a bit of sky perhaps. It also served as wall and slide at various points in the performance. The costuming ranged from contemporary to nineteenth-century to timeless (Caliban's black leather pants, also filigreed). Many of the male characters were played by women, including Alonso, Gonzalo, Antonio, the Boatswain, Trinculo, and Ariel (whose gender in the text is perhaps debatable?). The performances ranged in quality, with the woman playing Ariel perhaps being the standout, although I was also impressed with Alonso and Trinculo. The performance of Prospero was a little harder to judge, for reasons I'll get to.
I went to the show because I wanted to get a better sense of the play, which I had only read before. It really did help a lot to see it staged, although it also really helped to have read the play (and the critical analysis in the introduction to the edition I have) before I saw this performance. I always had a sense of what was being said even when I couldn't make out the words. As usual, seeing the characters interact physically really helped me understand all the relationships better, and I also got a much stronger sense of the use of magic in the story than I had gotten from reading the text. That may have been the biggest eye-opener in a lot of ways.
Some of my gut impressions from my most recent reading were given support, even though I had begun to doubt them after reading further commentary by others. The young lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand, came off as superficial and slight. This could have been a performance problem, because I didn't think either of the actors was very good with the language. Above all, Prospero came across as kind of an asshole. He shouts, he bellows, he manipulates, he abuses. The stentorian tones seemed like an interpretation, for which they found evidence in the text, but I'll be curious to see how other productions of the play might differ. Prospero was a very dark character in this version, and his conversion to a forgiving sort who resigns his awesome power was difficult to accept.
However, the one thing that his conversion hinged on was a scene that points to a major difference between my recent gut impressions and the impression I got from seeing the performance. I came away from my reading feeling that Ariel was a subservient little ass-kisser, but came away from the performance feeling that Ariel was the key to Prospero's conversion. It was played that way very deliberately, with an emphasis on the scene where Ariel reports on the torment of the castaways, particularly the tears of Gonzalo. I was surprised at how moving this speech of Ariel's was. I had completely missed it in my reading. Ariel's empathy melts Prospero's bitterness, and from there we move to his acts of forgiveness. The power of that pivotal scene was enough to make this transition seem at least initially understandable.
Over all, Ariel was a much more interesting character on the stage. I had also missed the brief show of rebellion fairly early in the play, which prompts Prospero to threats and to a barking expository lump about how he saved Ariel from captivity. There was also a terrific rendition of Ariel's own threatening speech to the castaways after the false feast, in which Ariel dropped from the catwalks in a black costume with bat wings and bat feet. The only problem with that scene was the electronic processing of Ariel's voice, which obscured the words.
Amongst the other characters, Alonso came across as more sympathetic than I anticipated (an emphasis on his mourning for his lost son and joy at the reunion), Gonzalo was more annoying (prating old fool), and Caliban perhaps less sympathetic. Not sure about that last, however. Caliban remains a captivating figure, but the buffoonish bellowing of this performance, at least, made him pretty annoying as well. (Interestingly, the actors playing Ariel and Caliban may have been husband and wife or family of some kind. They had the same last name.)
ron_drummond reports that he has mailed me a DVD of a BBC production from the '70s, so I'll probably watch that next. I'm also curious about Derek Jarman's film adaptation, which is apparently very idiosyncratic and moves scenes around. It should probably wait until I've seen another traditional adaptation. (No doubt it was reading about Jarman's movie that made me associate Tilda Swinton with Ariel, although alas, he didn't use her in this film in any role.)