Chariz Faulmino and Nadien Chu in The Tempest, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Tech dress rehearsal shot by Brianne Jang.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

On a perfectly calm summer evening under an azure sky, a tiny ship, The Lady Capulet, careens among us, capsizing its way toward the stage, flinging drunken party people here and there, topsy turvy.

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It’s a measure of the comic muse at play in The Tempest, David Horak’s nine-actor outdoor Freewill Shakespeare Festival production of Shakespeare’s strange and wonderful late romance, that it opens with an imaginative, and comical, storm (choreographed by Ainsley Hillyard). It’s a device from the mind of the sorcerer who stage-manages from atop the multi-layered scaffolding installation of designer Stephanie Bahniuk’s set. And it sets the tone for an entertaining al fresco production that sees The Tempest primarily as a comedy and not so much as an elusively soulful, sometimes funny/ sometimes just plain weird play.

Like the magus Prospera herself (the impressive Nadien Chu), the displaced ruler of Milan — and like Freewill itself at age 35, in exile from its home in Hawrelak Park — we’ve found ourselves set down on an unexpected island.  It’s not a park; there’s not a blade of grass to be seen. It’s a pad of concrete that has another life as the Crestwood Community League’s outdoor hockey rink.

Nadien Chu as Prospera in The Tempest, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Tech dress rehearsal shot by Brianne Jang

Prospera’s “island” isn’t a tropical paradise; it’s dotted with blocks of compressed trash, old tires, utility netting. And Prospera and her daughter Miranda (Chariz Faulmino), and two locals, their indentured “servants,” Ariel (Megan Sweet) and Caliban (Brett Dahl), have kitted themselves out in improvised outfits (designer: Bahniuk) of recycled plastic bags, mismatched socks, tattered sheets of re-purposed cellophane, the odd plastic flower … not a natural fibre anywhere in sight. The footwear is telling: Caliban’s shoes are blue bags; the airborne fairy Ariel has two different rubber boots (costumes: Bahniuk).

Having been supplanted from her rightful authority as Duchess of Milan by a treacherous sister (Jessy Ardern), Prospera has taken charge of an island kingdom, enslaved the locals, and 12 years later is waiting for revenge, or maybe a chance to right a great wrong, or both. The opening storm that Prospera conjures brings her enemies within her grasp.

It’s a story that has invited every sort of interpretation — nature vs. nurture, thoughts about colonialism among them. Prospera is first a victim of the usurping impulse, and then becomes a (foreign) victimizer herself.

The visuals of Horak’s production are striking. There is, as billed, an ecological theme in the idea of a floating island of trash. You can see how that works to match the show to its bare, un-foliated setting. It’s not easy, though, to figure out how the concept actually works itself out in the story. Not least because Caliban, the native inhabitant who’s routinely referred to as a brute and a monster, has a ravishing speech about the magical beauties, in sight and sound, of the island. “The isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not….” Brett Dahl negotiates a fascinating mixture of innocence and aggression as Caliban.

Is he then the possessor of the play’s most active imagination? In this production he delivers the speech as a soliloquy, alone on the stage, and not to the drunken clowns who’ve been bullying him. In any case, though unpredictable and scary (he’s attacked Miranda), his home, “this island’s mine!,” has been stolen from him.

The ecology theme does, though, have an inspired comic validation  in the scene in which Prospera conjures a banquet for the shipwreck survivors, only to make it vanish before they can eat. A garbage bin flips open, and a tray of fast food magically appears.

Jesse Ardern as Trinculo in The Tempest, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo of tech dress rehearsal by Brianne Jang

Horak’s production leans into the comedy of The Tempest, and not only in the stage time, attention, and funny costumes it gives two very dexterous comic actors Jessy Ardern as Trinculo and Troy O’Donnell as Stephano. Their farcical, zigzag progress through the play, the worst tourists and the dopiest colonizers in the world, is an escalation of booze, malice, and chaotic regime-change ambition. But there’s also considerable light comedy in the playful reactions of Faulmino’s pert and perky Miranda to her mother, and in her open-mouthed wonder when she meets Ferdinand (Hal Wesley Rogers). This is young love in light-hearted mode. And the impressively gigantic puppets of the wedding masque who appear and disappear conjure a sense of wonder that the production, outdoors with no artificial lighting, alludes to, amusingly, without really capturing.   

Megan Sweet is a cheerful, agile, rather pleasant Ariel, Prospero’s busy employee — which works fine without challenging the darker possibilities of that sprite. Dave Clarke’s original score provides wispy and tantalizing melodies, hints of music that’s magically both far off and near, festive and eerie. In a play full of music, though, and apt as it is, it doesn’t have the impact it might, perhaps because there’s not quite enough of it.

Chu, always so watchable, presides over the play with authority. Prospero’s maternal warmth peels off instantly when it’s challenged. She’s capable of delight and of anger on a slow burn . Curiously, she saves her most intense anger for a furious, startling delivery of the great and elegiac speech:“our revels now are ended…. ” It stops us in our tracks, momentarily, a last-minute reminder the stakes go beyond comedy and comic resolutions. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

REVIEW

The Tempest

Theatre: Freewill Shakespeare Festival

Directed by: Dave Horak

Starring: Nadien Chu, Chariz Faulmino, Meegan Sweet, Brett Dahl, Hal Wesley Rogers, Troy O’Donnell, Jessy Ardern, Melissa MacPherson, Cody Porter

Running: June 20 to July 14

Where: Crestwood Community League through June 23; Kenilworth Community League June 25 to 30; Lessard Community League July 2 to 7; Sherbrooke Community League July 9 to 14.

Tickets: tickets.freewillshakespeare.com.