The Tempest

I've been a fan of Edmonton's Shakespeare in the Park company from the beginning and I've only missed a few seasons over the years (usually when I was in another part of the country!) It didn't work out to get to Edmonton for them this year, so I hunted up the Calgary version instead. Here, the performances are staged by the Mount Royal College in Prince's Island Park. It's still "by donation" but they have a deal with the River Cafe, where you can get reserved seating and a picnic dinner, so I went for that.

Last night was our first set of tickets, for The Tempest. And I have to say that I was disappointed; the adjectives that came to mind were 'awkward', 'un-unified' and plain old 'flat'. Our pre-show music was some very repetitive and uninspired Native American rap that was played far too loudly. Stuart couldn't understand the choice, but I had a horrible inkling I knew what was up. More on that later. It turned out that the music and sound effects were amplified, but the actors weren't. You can probably imagine the results of that - the actors were often completely unintelligible, especially during the first act and the big storm.

I'm used to and appreciate a certain thematic unity in my costuming. You know, the Montagues all wear red and the Capulets all wear blue; this gives the audience visual cues to help follow the story and, IMHO also just makes the stage nice to look at. The costumes in this performance were just a nasty mishmash: Miranda was in psychadelic 60's, Prospero had a robe and black PVC coat, the nobles were all in pseudo-military gear. Huh?

It gets worse though... there was a very strange and unsuccessful attempt to turn it into a morality play about abusing Mother Nature. Calaban was played by a Native American and sometimes, but not always, decked out in traditional gear. Ariel was wearing shiny, space age clothes, but had Native American drummers and dancers to represent her working her tricks. And they used the Native American rap as the theme music for the nobles from Milan and Naples. Prospero had a feather and beads tied to his staff through the whole thing, which he returned to Calaban during his last speech where he asks for forgiveness. It felt very forced and really wasn't a particularly successful match-up.

We have tickets to go back next week and see The Merry Wives of Windsor. Since the clowns in last night's production were about the only good part, I'm holding out hope for better. I'll let you know.