Quick summary of what I was expecting from this play: horrible.
prior to going to see William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" at the New Vic Theatre in Scarborough the only things we had really done with the play was read through it, put together 10 lines from the first Caliban/Trinculo/Stephano scene, and watch a particularly poor version of the play by the BBC.
Here is a rundown of what I have put together as the basic story of the play (and PLEASE correct me at any time!!!):
Prospero and Miranda were banished (or at least prospero was and as Miranda was only 3 at the time there wasn’t an awful lot she could do but go with him) and he (they) was banished because he had (stupidly, if I say so) let his brother have dukedom for a while, and then was overthrown by said brother and so went to an island to live, his comfort that someone (I didn’t catch who... I think it was the old prime minister...) helped him escape and have plenty of reading materials and whatnot. During the (12) years they (Miranda and Prospero) spent on the island he got Arial (a spirit) out of a tree using *waves fingers* magic *stops waving fingers* Arial was put there by a nasty witch called sychorax (sp?) who had a son called caliban, who Miranda educated but he didn’t like it, tried to "defile" her and who Prospero uses as a slave. Whoops... I missed out the storm... wait no I didn’t. We don’t find all this out until after the storm, but it is actually already in place. Prospero, with the help of Ariel, creates this tempest (storm) in order to get his revenge on the duke of Milan, and the king as well. the king's son, Ferdinand wanders around a bit, probably led by Ariel to Prospero and Miranda, the latter of which immediately declares love for this goodly creature, but of course nothing can be simple so prospero decides to confuse everyone and be really mean to Ferdinand and makes HIM do Caliban's work... which is strange, because I don’t recall him ever telling Caliban, he doesn’t seem aware of this as he traipses through the wood and is horribly brutishly (and sexually) assaulted (in my honest opinion) by Trinculo, a jester from the ship- but all is well, caliban licks a foot or so and Stephano and Trinculo reunite. At some point during the play these three plot Prospero’s death and we now go to the next group; the king and his men. Now if you ask me the king is a bit of a simple man; he must be to employ so many people who want to KILL HIM. Two of the men… I think Sebastian being goaded on by Antonio (seriously correct me if I’m wrong.) Need to brush up on their murder 101 class. Meanwhile of course there’s lots of falling in love, and proposals- and that’s just Trinculo, I’m joking of course, the real love scenes at this point are between Miranda and Ferdinand. Then some more stuff happens, and everyone reconciles and leaves… Ariel has their freedom (I have NO clue as to the gender) as does Caliban. All’s well that ends well.
So, with this in mind, we went to see “The Tempest” without a very good outlook: and the opening scene, whilst I enjoyed the vocals and instrument work, didn’t have much to do with a storm- if I hadn’t known it was a storm I would have been pretty lost throughout the play; and with the theatre being in the round, the very first thing I saw was Michael Hugo climbing up the mast and I must say we had a lovely view of his arse for the first scene. The second scene for me was dire however, I wasn’t at all impressed with Sarah Cattle’s portrayal of Miranda- Miranda isn’t a character I was particularly fond of to start with- but Cattle played her like she was six- rather than a fifteen year old as scripted. The Prospero, played by Barrie Rutter, was very strange too, he didn’t seem to be all that magic-y (not a word I know, but I couldn’t think of one appropriate… sorcerer and warlock don’t really apply to him) and this second scene between the two of them made me wish I were at home watching “ER” on the television (I know I must be burnt at the stake- but in my defence I don’t have another theatre booking until the 25th). The arrival of Ariel, played not only by one woman- but three (Nicola Gardner, Simone Saunders, Belinda Everett), could have been done better. When Ariel enters you can see clearly that these women could possibly portray the different sides of Ariel- each who would perform the different tasks Prospero sets- but this was not taken advantage of and the only real scene of merit they have as three is in act III scene II in a setup shown below:
In which Trinculo is placed in different parts of the stage; each time conveniently in front of one of the Ariels to declare “thou liest” and for him to move on to another area only for it to happen again.
The men playing Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Adrian, Francisco and Gonzalo didn’t seem at first to be much to me. I found it hard at first to distinguish who was who and it wasn’t until Alonso, Gonzalo, Francisco and Adrian were asleep that I realised that the reason I was confused was that Adrian and Francisco had been merged into one character, portrayed by Peter Toon who also played boatswain, and I was able to determine who were the two bad ones in the group. These two men (Sebastian, Phil Corbitt- Antonio, Mark Stratton) were the only things keeping me happy and alive during their scenes I must say, however they weren’t what made me glad I had gotten on that coach rather than go about my normal Thursday night activities.
The main men in my eyes were Stephano (Simon Holland Roberts), Trinculo (Conrad Nelson) and Caliban, played by Michael Hugo who, in my opinion, was the man that made it all worth while. He was the funniest and most talented (in my opinion) in the production. The Stephano/Trinculo/Caliban scenes were the most fun I have had in a long time. The moment Michael Hugo came on stage as Caliban I had my doubts because of his size and his looks (I could only see that he was not a bad looking man!) but when the dialogue came rolling out of his mouth and when he moved across the stage I knew they had made a great decision of casting him in this role. The scene where the three fools meet was so funny that the audience was rolling with laughter, no-one could stop- these three men were blessed with the gift of excellent comedic timing and we, as an audience, enjoyed it thoroughly. As soon as Trinculo opened his mouth we knew we were in for a treat as the sound of Paul O’Grady slid out.
Then on top of all of this was the music. “The Tempest” is William Shakespeare’s most musical play to begin with, and after seeing a couple of years previous the rendition of “A comedy of errors” I was preparing for more of the same. The way they used the music to aid the story worked brilliantly, it was clearly thought through very carefully, the only disappointment being the opening scene where although it was beautifully done, it didn’t really convey the feeling of a terrible storm. I think the musical highlight of my night (and I know one or two of my friends’ too) was Caliban’s “I got a new master” song which involved a jazzy tune to which Michael Hugo danced around the stage wiggling his rear-end and dancing (using the pole once or twice I might add) in various ways.
I thoroughly enjoy the plays I have seen at the New Vic Theatre and would recommend seeing them- whilst they are not perfect, they will truly keep you entertained.
Keep up the good work.
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