Arts :: Theater
This rough magic by Brian Jewell
contributing writerFriday Mar 21, 2008 Shipwrecked noblemen wash up on a magical island where Fate - and the implacable will of the magician Prospero - conspire to right an old misdeed. Thus begins The Tempest, Shakespeare’s late masterpiece of high drama, low comedy, and revenge that cools into forgiveness. Under the clever direction of David R. Gammons, The Actors’ Shakespeare Project stages a hearty telling of the classic tale steeped in the trappings of turn of the century stage magic. Old-fashioned footlights flicker as Prospero, garbed like Mandrake the Magician, casts his spells. Meanwhile a gamine Ariel struts like a magician’s assistant, people pop in and out of trap doors, and a trio of drunks becomes a comic vaudeville act. Although Alvin Epstein isn’t as commanding a Prospero as one would wish, the rest of the cast more than make up for it.
Marianna Bassham makes a sly and elegant Ariel, Mara Sidmore is charmingly coltish as the lovestruck Miranda, and Richard Snee and David Gulette have a suitably regal gravity; while John Kuntz, Robert Walsh and Benjamin Evett threaten to steal the show with some wonderful drunk scenes and physical comedy. Swanson and designer David Gammons have stocked the show with clever stagecraft and beautiful imagery, including an ingenious rendering of the storm at sea that sets the plot into motion and signals that it will indeed be a magical performance.
The Tempest runs through April 13 at Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second Street, Cambridge. Tickets $30-$42. Info: 866-811-4111 or www.actorsshakespeareproject.org.
|
|
|
Email
Print
Share
