You would never have known Ben Carlson was an understudy. The rugged surety with which he brought psychic toll and paternal care to Prospero was unimpeachable. While the banished magus is often a role reserved for the victory lap of a theatrical grand old gent, seeing Prospero be closer to the textually appropriate 50 years of age was refreshing. We often have a bit of "Aunt May syndrome" when it comes to the role, and forget he's not actually supposed to be Miranda's grandparent. By which I mean, Carlson was more Marisa Tomei than Rosemary Harris.
But had this been a standard performance in the run, Prospero would have been played by another Festival mainstay, Geraint Wyn Davies. Davies being indisposed this day, that also bumped John Kirkpatrick up to Stephano (where Carlson is normally). Seeing Kirkpatrick, the Festival's most reliable Duke/First Messenger, in a more substantive role, was delightful. Neither understudies missed a beat, and had there been no program insert, not a single audience member would have known anything was irregular.Twelve years prior to the one-day action of The Tempest, Prospero and his daughter Miranda have been banished from his Milanese dukedom, and put to sea to die. They ended up ashore on a magical, nearly deserted isle, populated by the spirit Ariel, and the monster Caliban. The play takes place on the day Prospero's enemies sail near the island, and he casts them ashore after using his magical powers to raise the titular storm, and seek a path to retribution, which eventually turns into forgiveness.
The production on the Festival Stage in Stratford, ON, places the action in the early 1800s, a "modernization" so light it counts as period. As such, the Italian regents are vaguely Napoleonic, though the elemental Ariel and Caliban retain their respective ethereal and aquatic features. The production is Antoni Cimolino's last Shakespeare outing as Artistic Director, and he commendably refrains from the morphine-drip of reading Prospero as a Shakespeare stand-in. His production of The Tempest is charming, sturdy and reasonably moving, if not fully convincing (more on that later).
The ensemble is uniformly reliable. The most original characterization comes from Marissa Orjalo as Ariel, who brings a sense of hobgoblin juvenilia to the role of Prospero's servant. Orjalo leans into the zoomy toddler energy of Ariel, effectively highlighting the role as Prospero's adopted child. If Orjalo veers a bit too far towards the sentimental with "do you love me, master? No?" how could she be blamed, aren't such moments why we're here at all?
Fiona Reid's gender-swapped Gonzala brings lovely feeling to her vision of a new "commonwealth" where the traitorous actions of her peers could never take place. Gordon S. Miller lends appropriate moustache-twirling energy to Prospero's usurping brother, Antonio, though when you've already conquered Iago, you seem overqualified for all other heavies.
Carlson softens some of Prospero's harsher language to Ariel, and finds reasonable affection for Miranda (Ashley Dingwell) without veering too far into the earnestness of a contemporary girl-dad. I'd say his moral contrition started too early, and that it should have been more the result of Ariel's admonishment vis-a-vis "were I human," but such quibbles make me feel that, as a Shakespeare nerd, I should get back in my locker.
As for the "convincing" claim: this Tempest leaves you satisfied if never energized. Cimolino takes the play's dramaturgy at face-value and doesn't attempt to hew it into a nail-biter or psychodrama. Cimolino makes the masque that Prospero presents to celebrate the engagement of Miranda and Ferdinand (Dakota Jamal Wellman) an underwater extravaganza, replete not only with mythical goddesses, but also attendant oversized jellyfish. Absolutely nothing is wrong with such treatment of Shakespeare's most vexing intra-theatrical interlude. The only ways Cimolino's Tempest doesn't succeed are in ways audiences are unaccustomed to seeing productions accomplish. When you have a capable and dynamic cast across the board, it helps cover up for the fact that, as written, Prospero feels like an absent protagonist between acts 1 and 4. When your production is attractively designed (set and costumes by Julie Fox), an audience doesn't mind that the plots with the nobles and the drunken clowns can feel like dramatic loitering. Shakespeare seemed more interested in dramatic symmetry than dramatic tension in his last solo-authored play.
At least as preserved on TV format, John Hirsch's 1982 Stratford production is the closest we've come to the play onstage actually feeling like a corrective revenge tragedy with a pressure-cooker narrative. Despite the apparent urgency of one day's action that will make or break this unjustly banished duke and his innocent child, The Tempest just never feels like a nail-biter. Hamlet says "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough hew them how we will." The action of The Tempest often feels like the divinity without any of the rough-hewing. Peter Greenaway's film Prospero's Book smartly dispensed with pretending to care about the plot, decided The Tempest was what happened when renaissance oil painting and baroque pageantry and mellifluous poetry collided, and was wildly the better for it.
No one will leave Cimolino's production thinking he did wrong by Shakespeare, but justifying The Tempest as drama instead of emotional spectacle remains an open question.
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