The Tempest (The Reveller's Theatre Co)

The Reveller's second production takes us to Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'. The production was presented at Murdoch University's Drama Workshop, for a well-priced $10. Initially I was sceptical, as The Reveller's first show, a musical variation of 'Twelfth Night' was quite unpolished, and left me feeling incredulous as to their prospect of taking it to schools. In fact, I had felt a little cheated and deceived. The show was a few weeks behind, and yet their publicity was so good! Still, their publicity with 'The Tempest' has also been great, and gladly, they are much more polished this time. I have not read 'The Tempest' previously, although I am told I should. I will attempt to summarise the story via The Reveller's showing of it. Prospero (a Gandalf-like figure) lives on an island with his sheltered daughter, and commands two slave-spirits, Ariel and Caliban (the former being powerful and cool, and the latter being some kind of fish-monster). Anyway I missed why the nobles from Naples were on a boat, but they are near Prospero's island and he uses his magic-staff to make them crash. Following this, the nobles are split in two - one half being the comic relief, who meet up with Caliban and engage in some drunken shenanigans - while the other half being the proper nobles, who have to deal with each other whilst being manipulated by the precocious spirit, Ariel. In the end, they learn the virtue of... revenge? And through being stuck on an island together they sort out some family issues (I think). Also, the dashing son of the king of Naples gets hitched with Gandalf's daughter, as an extreme form of revenge for Prospero's dark past. Anyway, I am no stranger to Shakespeare's strange, but far-too-repeated plots. The issue with this production - which I will explicitly say now - is that there is no tension. There's no urgency. The pace was all off. The performance was good, but it was incredibly flat. The other issue is that there was no moral. I'm not saying that all theatre should be moralistic, in fact, being just entertaining is quite good. But if it's flat, then it at least needs something educational to hang onto. Ideally it should be entertaining and have some kind of political message, but I felt like this was Shakespeare for the sake of Shakespeare. And it made all the post-modernity coursing through my veins pulsate and rupture. Before I get too dramatic, what I really want to say is, the performance has no ups and downs. There was no 'climax', there was no pivotal moment where I thought "Wow, this was good." It was all just a bit of a shrug of the shoulders, and I felt myself itching to find a reason not to leave - Not because the performance was shocking, but because I could probably benefit more on the outside world than in the theatre. Rant aside, it was very visually captivating - probably the main reason I stayed. The lighting and sound was all wonderful, although perhaps the sound at the beginning when the ship crashed could have created a little more 'urgency' (getting back to the flatness). I have nothing else to say about the lighting and sound, the designers should be proud. The set was interesting, although not as revolutionary as people were making it out to be. They used lots of chairs to create the set, and ended up smashing them around a lot, or using them as props. It was neat. But it served more of a function, with the aspiration of taking it to schools. The chairs were good. But that's about it, really. One of the more pressing issues with the design was actually with the costumes. All the characters looked really good, and interesting. EXCEPT. Except for the four noble characters. Antonio, Alonso, Sebastian and Gonzalo. I don't know the difference between them because they all look the same! Apparently Antonio was evil? I only worked that out when he was about to hit the other guy (I don't know who, honestly), with a chair? Maybe it was an acting thing, too. Maybe he wasn't big enough with his character. Or maybe it was because he wore the same suit as the other three. There was no distinction. At least give the evil one some red or something! I dreaded life itself whenever these four came on stage, because I honestly did not connect with it. They certainly contributed to the flatness. However, everyone else's costumes were fine, suitable and distinguishable. The comedy relief provided some... well, comedy relief. Ariel did some cool body-things. Gandalf did Gandalf-things. And finally at the end, Ariel got her freedom - FREEDOM. Maybe that's a theme or a moral message that could have been hooked onto? Modernise it! Contextualise it! I haven't seen good Shakespeare since The Lion King. Have a solid premise and a conclusion! That was something the Revellers did well with 'Twelfth Night' - something about a song of life or something. It was cheesy, but it worked. This time, I kept thinking. What is a tempest, and. Why should I go see it? A tempest is supposed to be thrilling and energetic, is it not? I felt like it should have been called "The Perth Storm", because that's what it was. A lie. Everything aside though, it was a solid performance, and I hate that I didn't talk about the acting much, but Prospero, Caliban, Ariel and Stephena were wonderful, followed by Ferdinand, Miranda and Trinculo also giving a good performance. I cannot say much about the other four, since I really could not distinguish between them. Overall, it was solid. And that's a good foundation. It just needed... something!