Tempest: Bizarre, bold and beautiful — yes, all three epithets are needed in one sentence
The Tempest
Tobacco Factory Theatre
Until May 1
By Sophia Lomax
It is hard not to make comparison between admiration for The Tempest, arguably one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, and its magnificently controlled direction by Andrew Hilton at what is surely the absolute top of his game.
Bizarre, bold and beautiful — yes, all three epithets are needed in one sentence — the spectacle of Prospero, exiled duke of Milan, exercising his supernatural powers to secure his daughter’s future is not one to be missed by any theatregoer open to enchantment by the complex but cathartic resolutions offered up by this production.
From the off, Prospero’s power, as he commands the storm which shipwrecks his usurping brother, as well as the King of Naples and his son, plus assorted noblemen, is perfectly captured by just a rope, a flash or two of lightning, staccato thunder and some terrified bellows.
The main players, as with the entire, cohesive cast, are marvellous. Ian Barritt is an empathetic Prospero, Ffion Jolly’s wondering Miranda effortlessly causes all who meet her to tumble headlong in love, and Christopher Staines plays both Ariel and Caliban with eerie synergy: all manage to conjure up island life as a place where both dreams and living nightmares can come swiftly true.
Barritt’s Prospero is never entirely consumed by the anger inherent and simmering within the role: instead, he’s a painfully loving father concerned above all else to return Miranda to society and the company of others. And the frightening ‘Gollum—precursor’, Caliban, is more heartrending then petrifying for much of the play, with Prospero torn between loathing him, anger at Caliban’s attempted assault on Miranda and pity for his miserable plight.
More than anything, lingering music washes over this production and lifts it into wholly magical realms. Particularly beautiful are the male-voice a capella quartets and Ariel’s solo voice, spinning the stories shimmeringly together.
In Andrew Hilton, we surely have a real-life Prospero for our maritime city. Be beguiled.
SATF is mind-blowing – it’s one of the most amazing things Bristol has to offer.
Wiliam Shakespeare and his theatre company did come to Bristol several times themselves in the 1590s, a fantastic time for English drama. There was no theatre here then, so they performed in the Guildhall in Broad Street – the Tobacco Factory of its time.
http://www.buildinghistory.org/bristol/elizabethandrama.shtml
When I go to the Tobacco Factory, because of the ambience, the production, and the quality of acting and directing, I always feel that in many ways I’m getting an experience quite close to the one Shakespeare’s original audiences had, which was almost before they invented theatres at all.