The timing of the first night of the outdoor performance by Travelling Light Theatre of The Tempest at Wells House on Saturday was impeccable, one of the hottest July evenings on record.
As a consequence of the sultry climes, there was a strong attendance at this premiere of one of Shakespeare ‘s more obtuse but no less affectionate comedies, with the Wells House a fitting backdrop as it was slowly transmogrified by the evening sun’s fading glory.
A setting therefore of balmy and bucolic tranquility, with acrobatic swallows and crows a theatrical sideshow on an absolutely still twilight, engineered the ideal atmosphere for Shakespearean declamation, and this production is fortunate to have Steve Wilson as Prospero, attired to accentuate the play’s amoebic mystery.
The Tempest is not the most accessible of Shakespeare ‘s comedies and, as with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are plays within the play, a multitude of interventions, but the opening scene, ‘a tempestuous noise of thunder’ over a ship at sea, symbolises the uses and abuses of authority with a foundering ship on which passengers and crew are at odds.
Grasp that and the play’s complex structure is henceforth a doddle.
Or, perhaps not. Prospero, who commanded the storm, assures the audience via Miranda (Amy Joyce Hastings) that nobody has been hurt, as characters seldom are in Shakespeare ‘s comedies
However, if a storm, upon which a ship is tossed until it yaws uncertainly toward an island, is unreal, then what in the ensuing scenes can be accepted as what it appears?
That is the timeless Shakespearean conundrum.
What segues the play from beginning to end is Shakespeare ‘s depiction of Ariel (a superb Cara Christie, the essence of the ethereal spirit, courtesy of make-up artist Abigail Way), a wraith like presence from the audience’s perspective, whose teasing and playful bond with Prospero contrasts with the enmity between Prospero and Caliban (a gutsy Hope Brown) just one of many imbroglios which fester among such a large cast, a feature of the bard’s comedies.
There are thus many comic twists and turns to whet the appetite, none more so, on this occasion, that the menage a trois between a flawless Paul Walsh as a Harlequin Trinculo, Caliban and Stephano (Pat Sinnott), directed like a Fellini-burlesque by Michael Way: it is an infectious but deliberately efficacious spin on a comedy, twinned with A Midsummer Night’s Dream by its visionary gold dust. What is probably Shakespeare ‘s last solo work is, in this instance, a worthy introduction to theatre ‘en plein air.’
