The Magdalen Players’ production of The Tempest was forced indoors on Wednesday night
by the constant drizzle that seems to have recently descended upon us. The last-minute move
to the college auditorium left the actors still putting together the set as the audience arrived. It
was a particular blow as this light-hearted staging of Shakespeare’s last play would have been
ideal for a balmy evening in the open air of the President’s Garden.
The production’s main twist framed Prospero not as the exiled Duke of Milan, but as the usurped ringmaster of a Milanese circus, left to while away the years with card tricks on his mysterious island. He was complemented by a hyperactive and juggling Ariel, striped costumes and an accordion and guitar duo, with engaging results that also reflected the play’s conceit of its characters as entertainers.
With all the high spirits, the staging’s chief weakness was its neglect of The Tempest’s darker side. Dylan Townley’s top-hatted Prospero was a little thin, and lacked the bitterness of a man who has been left marooned for half a lifetime by his own brother, while Antonio (Archie Cornish) and Sebastian (Cameron Quinn) looked far too approachable to be convincing cold-blooded killers.
In its comedy, however, this jaunty Tempest really shone. Andrew Wynn Owen excelled as the kindly Gonzalo, relentlessly positive but ever so mildly senile. Sam Plumb’s camp Trinculo was equally well done, giving such a startlingly natural delivery that I started to wonder if he’d gone off script and was boldly improvising on Shakespeare. The decision to stage the play as an upbeat and masque-like spectacle may have cost it some depth, but made for a charming summer production which will hopefully return to the open air where it belongs.
FOUR STARS
