A perfectly odd - and magical - 'Tempest'
CAMBRIDGE - Stranded on a round wooden O of an island, the ancient magician works his final tricks. They're rougher, perhaps, than they once were, but his art - at once childish and expert in its simplicity - nevertheless casts its indelible spell.
That's Shakespeare's Prospero. It is also Alvin Epstein's Prospero, in Patrick Swanson's shabby-elegant, shadowy-brilliant production of "The Tempest" for the Actors' Shakespeare Project at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center. Along with set designer David R. Gammons, Swanson and Epstein created a memorable "King Lear" a couple of seasons back, and this reunion of their talents creates a similarly persuasive expression of a coherent and powerful shared vision.
Swanson's "Tempest" is a very individual one, with an indoor air of quietly decaying civilization where others might be windswept and wild. Gammons's marvelously threadbare set has the feel of a decrepit Victorian music hall (lit with becoming gloom by Jeff Adelberg), where an aging conjurer and his ragtag troupe have gathered one last time to make a little magic. This may not be the most likely setting imaginable for Shakespeare's tale of the banished Prospero, his daughter Miranda, his spirit-servants Ariel and Caliban, and the old enemies who find themselves shipwrecked on his island, but in its organic development of imagery and theme it is a fine and fascinating interpretation of the text.
Epstein seems old, old, old as the cagey magician, a once mighty man now summoning every last scrap of strength. A few times at Sunday's press opening he had to pause before grasping his next line, but the actor's perseverance through frailty strangely deepened the impression of a virtuoso in his final act. And Epstein can still do more with a single word than most actors can do with a paragraph; he speaks every syllable with a rich sense of both its poetry and its meaning.
Here he's especially marvelous in his small, slightly self-amused gestures: the offhand wave of a hand, the flick of a finger, the flourish of a cape that this lifelong magician uses to cast a spell, control a minion, or sink a ship. In his embroidered waistcoat, flamboyant tie, and quaint tails (just one of many beautifully rendered costumes by Seth Bodie), he calls to mind that other irresistible showman, the wizard of Oz. Great and powerful, indeed.
Prospero's island is peopled with a fine cast of spirits and humans, too. Mara Sidmore makes a lovely, spunky Miranda, almost unbearably sweet in her naive excitement at the brave new world she spies at the end, and she finds a charming and elegant match in Jason Bowen's Ferdinand. Richard Snee breathes an appropriate arrogance, followed by repentance, as Prospero's scheming brother, Antonio; he's well matched in aristocratic knavery by David Gullette's Alonso and Antonio Ocampo-Guzman's Sebastian (though these two do look more like father and son than the brothers they should be).
As Ariel, Marianna Basham supplies a winning insouciance and conspiratorial glee; she's the old trickster's longtime confederate, and she's wise to his every wile. Benjamin Evett's Caliban is as monstrous as you could wish, though his curses and capers are more convincing than his sometimes too-smooth eloquence. As for the clownish drunkards, John Kuntz is his usual waspishly hilarious self as Trinculo, and Robert Walsh makes Stephano a riotous, swaggering cowboy who's just delightful to watch.
Equally delightful are the three "goddesses" who turn up to bestow nuptial blessings on the happy couple: Kuntz, Snee, and Daniel Berger-Jones in frumpy drag, complete with flowered hats and red clown noses. That's just one of the touches - along with a few chanteys and hornpipes for the sailors, some plaintive tunes for Ariel, and even a glittering sword dance - that hint at director Swanson's regular gig, writing and directing the Revels.
The revelry here, tinged as it is with a faint but unmistakable air of elegiac melancholy, never feels out of place. Rich, strange, condensed yet irreducibly complex, this late play of the master responds vividly to all the oddity a company can bring to it. This "Tempest" is one strange fish - and that's why it's a perfect storm.
Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, the surname of actress Marianna Bassham was misspelled in the review of the Actors' Shakespeare Project production of "The Tempest" in yesterday's Living/Arts section.
