THE TEMPEST To 1 March.
London/Tour.
THE TEMPEST
by William Shakespeare
Arts Theatre 6-7 Great Newport Street WC2H 7JB To 27 January then tour to 1 March 2008.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu 2.30pm, Sat 3.30pm, Sun 3pm.
Runs 1hr 50min No interval.
TICKETS: 0844 847 1608.
www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 January.
Clear, thoughtful and finely acted.
More squall than tempest in scale, Jatinder Verma’s clear-sighted Tara Arts production ensures its 6-strong crew navigate Shakespeare’s late play with clarity. And there’s no sense of finality about things, largely owing to Robert Mountford’s youthful Prospero. Never have father and daughter seemed so like brother and sister as Mountford (a fine verse-speaker) and Jessica Manley’s Miranda.
Neither of the cast’s women is girlishly gamine. Unsurprisingly with Manley, who doubles as Alonzo, the king with an adult son. Yet the hijab Prospero provides for Miranda emphasises male authority and a protective closeness contrasting the conflicts all around. Meanwhile, the circle of ropes on Claudia Mayer’s set increases the sense of confinement.
Caroline Fitzpatrick’s Ariel may be subdued by Prospero’s power, but her temper’s stormy whenever her release is further delayed. When she stops mid-sentence in anguish over the situation of Prospero’s visitors, thumping the wall, it’s an expression of frustration that she cannot feel the human emotions she’s observed and an extension of her own agony.
Though this influences Prospero, there’s no calm of mind, all passion spent about him, right up to the desperate plea in his final words, when it’s as if he can see the future and it doesn’t work.
Modern productions often make Miranda’s hopeful “brave new world” ironic, by having her speak it as she looks innocently at the play’s villains. Here, doubling requirements leave only benign old Gonzalo and the malign Antonio in view, so her choice of physical appearance over moral virtue as the subject of these words makes more than ever for The Tempest as the culmination of Shakespeare’s unresolved happy endings (think Henry V, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Measure for Measure).
It’s a tough world out there, as projected waves crash around Prospero’s image; no wonder, in the first scene, the travellers’ hope for survival rests on a sailor looking the sort who’ll end hanged rather than drowned. Keith Thorne’s lyrical Caliban, some of his harshest lines cut, lapsing lamentingly into his own language, seems likeliest to find freedom; not through power over others but by being left alone.
Ferdinand/Sebastian: Chris Jack.
Antonio/Stephano: Tom Kanji.
Ariel: Caroline Fitzpatrick.
Miranda/Alonzo: Jessica Manley.
Prospero/Trinculo: Robert Mountford.
Caliban/Gonzalo: Keith Thorne.
Director: Jatinder Verma.
Designer: Claudia Mayer.
Lighting/Video: Jvan Morandi.
Sound: Kimberly Egan fort Orbital Sound.
Movement: Veena Ramphal.
Ropework: Dina Mousawi.
Voice coach: David Carey.
Assistant designers: Madeleine Birchall, Lucy Wilkinson.
2008-01-14 01:46:56