The Tempest
The Bridge Project at BAM
Directed by Sam MendesThis is the second year of the Bridge Project, a joint production between the Brooklyn Academy of Music and The Old Vic Theatre in London. The show is also scheduled to tour in Asia and Europe. Last year I was able to catch both Bridge Project productions – The Cherry Orchard and A Winter’s Tale - at the Old Vic. I’m not a
Chekov fan and this production did not change my mind, but I was pleased. A Winter’s Tale, however, was stunning, beautiful and finely nuanced.
The Tempest is one of my absolute favorite of Shakespeare’s plays – the other two being Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth - and my hopes were high for this production.
The Tempest is playing in
BAM’s Harvey Theater. I’d been to the space before, quite a few years ago, but had forgotten the feel of it. The theatre has intentionally been left in a dilapidated state. There are cracks in the cement, the paint is wearing thin on the walls, and even the speakers look like they’
ve been though an earthquake or two. It gives you the feeling that you are trespassing into a building that could fall down around you at any moment. Your presence feels like an intrusion, so does the performance. The entire experience feels taboo.
At first glance the set looks like a production manager’s nightmare: a pool of water and a pit of sand. On second glance it was confirmed as a production manager’s nightmare. In order to get from both upstage doors to center stage the actors had to walk through the pool of water. Everyone, minus
Prospero and Miranda, had wet feet all night.
The main playing area is a fifteen foot diameter pit of sand. None of the characters, spare
Prospero and Ariel, said any lines outside this space. They also never exited the stage. I saw what Sam
Mendes was doing. I understood it on an intellectual level. I liked it on an intellectual level. It just did not work. I knew the sand pit was
Prospero’s sphere of influence and everything that happened inside of it was caused by him. But
Prospero never felt like he was in possession of magic power. I understood that when the characters sat in chairs in the pool of water they were waiting for the puppet master to call them forward to take on their role. But I kept worrying they were going to catch cold just sitting there.
The Tempest begins with a mighty sea storm splintering a ship before the audience’s very eyes, and ends just after a fanciful pageant celebrating the future marriage of Miranda and Ferdinand. The eponymous Tempest, in an attempt to show how the storm was controlled by
Prospero and Ariel, lacked an element of ferocity or fear. The revels of the end of the play, which can be just as joyful as the storm is dangerous, also fell short of being the entertainment
Prospero promises. Juliet
Rylance played a very matured, courtly Miranda, which is contrary to the fifteen year old girl raised on a deserted island whom Shakespeare wrote. Stephen
Dillane’s
Prospero felt like a tottering old man plotting an ancient revenge, not a man who can conjure up sea storms or visions of pageants. The one highlight was Anthony O’Donnell’s
Trinculo, who brought an energy to the stage, which was lacking from everyone else. He was a little life, in a production otherwise rounded by sleep.
This is concept Shakespeare at its most contrived and ill executed. I would advise Shakespeare fans to skip this production.
