Review: The Tempest at Shakespeare North Playhouse ****

Earlier this year Shakespeare North Playhouse delivered a gleefully irreverent stag and hen Love’s Labour’s Lost, and before that was a Twelfth Night with plenty of chutzpah.

Now, after a summer of al fresco Shakespeare-inspired shows in the open air performance garden, autumn sees the Bard returning to the main stage with a rollicking retelling of the playwright’s revengers’ tragicomedy which opens the First Folio but actually comes from the end of his career.

The Tempest is a collaboration with those pedal-powered people at Handlebards, and the whole production certainly has a freewheeling, madcap, outdoor theatre feel to it.

This is emphasised by designer Ellie Light’s ‘enchanted isle’ seat with its living foliage draped from the Cockpit theatre’s galleries. The octagonal central stage space is kept mostly clear, apart from a cluttered office desk in one corner, and a versatile pile of discarded luggage in another.

It’s here that the exiled Duke of Milan Prospero and his young daughter Miranda are washed up after a ruthless coup by his own brother Antonio, a hostile takeover sanctioned by Duke Alonso, and where, after 12 long years of festering, the deposed noble finally has an opportunity to wreak his revenge.

Lucy Green’s Prospero is a bombastic Barnum-like showman at the heart of Shakespeare’s 17th Century slice of meta-theatre, a character who loves his immediate kith and kin but who shows his own ruthless, manipulative and even sadistic streak when dealing with others, not least Caliban, the enslaved ‘monster’ whose home the island was first, and actor-muso Scott Brooks' sonorous sprite Ariel to whom Prospero promises freedom…albeit mañana, mañana.

Only in the closing minutes does he undergo at least a partial epiphany, realised in the elegiac 'we are such stuff as dreams are made on' speech.

Above: Scott Brooks as Ariel and Lucy Green as Prospero. Top: Prospero works his magic. Photos by Patch Dolan.

The petite Green infuses the middle-management magician with ‘big man’ energy in a toothsome and knowing performance that’s pitched somewhere between David Brent and the late Paul Daniels, and also reminded me strongly of Keddy Sutton’s larger-than-life blokey impersonations in many a Royal Court Christmas show.

In fact, under Nel Crouch’s direction the magical masque/play-within-a-play of act IV becomes a hallucinatory Paul Daniels-meets-Strictly interlude involving illusions and card tricks which builds to a frenetic, crowd-pleasing finale.

It’s only matched for sheer barking spectacle by the hammy house of horror ‘harpy’ (Ariel with flying monkey wings fashioned, brilliantly, from Post It notes) scene which precedes it.

Meanwhile talking of crowds, the fourth wall comes down continuously and right from what is a magical and gloriously inventive opening with Brooks conducting the audience like a symphony orchestra to create the evocative sound effects of a gathering and all mighty storm.

Above: Miranda (Princess Khumalo) and Ferdinand (Meredith Lewis). Photo by Patch Dolan.

Individual audience members in the pit also find themselves embroiled in the tomfoolery, including some neat character switches which augment the sterling work of the five-strong cast – three of whom, Princess Khumalo, Ross Foley and Meredith Lewis, play multiple roles over the course of the play.

Foley doubles, energetically and amusingly, as both Alonso and his perfidious brother Sebastian, but makes a particular impression as Caliban, the intelligent but tortured original Frankenstein’s ‘monster’, whom he imbues with both heart and pathos.

Princess Khumalo’s principal role is as the bright but naive Miranda, depicted here as a teenager with raging hormones who simply can’t keep her hands off Lewis’s gauche princeling Ferdinand. There’s an exceedingly fine line between youthful infatuation and harassment however, and without wanting to sound tragically po faced, Miranda’s perpetual bottom grabbing does feel like it tips over the edge.

The only other thing that comes close to tipping over the edge is the running time. On press night the performance ran almost 20 minutes over, pushing it towards the three-hour mark.

Despite both the cast (there’s a corpsing-off between Prospero and Duke Alonso towards the end) and the audience are having a whale of a time, it would benefit from a couple of judicious tweaks here and there to make sure it remains bright and tight.

Still, in essence the Handlebards’ puckish take on Shakespeare’s tempestuous tale is invigorating, inventive and very entertaining; an autumn treat at the playhouse which stands in the aptly named Prospero Place.