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Review of Sam Mendes’ The Tempest at BAM
Ron Cephas Jones, Caliban in The Tempest
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All hail great Shakespeare—most of the time. After centuries of the playwright’s works put on every sort of stage, the productions nowadays often seem stale and stagnant. But Sam Mendes brought with him to BAM his directorial bragging rights—a Tony for Cabaret and an Oscar for American Beauty—and gave Shakespeare’s The Tempest the kick it needed. Taking a postmodernist cue, Mendes skillfully plays up the metatheatricality already embedded in the script and introduces new media to the comedy.
The plot makes it easy to see why The Tempest suits Mendes well. Prospero, purportedly the incarnation of the bard himself, orchestrates every action of the play with purposeful magic: He shipwrecks his enemies, brews romance for his daughter, and engineers all resolutions, with a lot of action in between, of course.
Mendes pinpoints these not-so-veiled directorial allusions, particularly with the epilogue. The lights come up, the cast disappears, and Prospero (Stephen Dillane) breaks the infamous fourth wall. He elucidates his role and bids the audience adieu: “Let your indulgences set me free.” In the true spirit of the theater, someone clapped a bit too early at this production, but Prospero carried on like a true director would.
While the script remains entirely in tact (including the sometimes uncomfortable colonial subtext), this production proved innovative in its use of wiggle room. In place of Prospero’s magic show of spirits was a montage of video clips shot in the past few decades. Rather than detract, this well-placed use of modern technology freshens up a scene that could teeter on the wrong side of cheesy.
But perhaps the most noteworthy is the production’s highly conceptual set. A giant ivory-colored, suede-like circle lay as a minimalist centerpiece. Its round shape pays subtle homage to the Globe Theatre as it acts as the site of all action: Caliban emerges from its earthly core, Stephano tests its cliff edges, and Ferdinand toils away in its foresty interior.
While players are “off stage,” they sit upon wooden chairs in a 3-inch deep pool of water taking up half the stage. Literally, it reiterates that this is an island and makes for quite the ethereal reflections. Metaphorically, it reminds the audience this is indeed a concoction of acting, a metatheatrical move more attributed to postmodernists like Beckett. Surprisingly enough, a seemingly traditional man deserves the credit for the set: Tom Piper of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
This is all to say that Mendes and his company of seasoned Shakespeare players truly made this incarnation of The Tempest “such stuff as dreams are made on,” to borrow the words of the play. What could have been a safe production turned out to be an inventive reimagining that loses none of its original magic.
The Tempest at BAM Harvey Theater, Brooklyn, February 14 – March 13, visit www.bam.org for more info or to buy tickets.