Theater Review: 'The Tempest' (at Seattle Shakespeare Company)
By Gianni Truzzi

The cleverly conceived production of The Tempest at Seattle Shakespeare Company is otherworldly beyond its tale of sprites and sorcery on a remote island. Beneath the golden cloak that grants the magician Prospero his power, he wears the gown of a hospital patient. His first entrance is heralded by the beeps of a heart monitor.

In this subtle context, his famous declaration, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" transforms from philosophy to confession.

It's a simple notion for the work Shakespeare penned late in life, suggesting the delusion of a man suspended between life and death. It grants director George Mount and his formidable design crew modest license to the play's fantasy as well as its themes of making final peace.

The fragmentary set by L.B. Morse of rails, canvas and rigging suggests a wreck, but can equally be interpreted as the scattered flotsam of the mind. Similarly, the detailed costuming by Doris Black is imaginatively free of constraint, drawing on Jungian archetypes for nobles and clowns.

The Tempest is among Shakespeare's most accessible works, in which the fairy spirit Ariel helps Prospero exact justice on the men that usurped his dukedom and marooned him with his daughter Miranda. Using his preserved books of magic, he has mastered occult powers and raises a storm that destroys the passing ship carrying his enemies and scatters them to his shores.

Even sporting a hospital tag on his wrist, there is little frailty in Michael Winters' steady portrayal of the magician. Prospero is a tyrant, the lord who commands the indentured Ariel and chains the enslaved monster Caliban, as well as a loving father to Miranda. Of those two identities, Winters gravitates to the gentler one, reserving cruelty only as a reluctant tactic. The veteran of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival commands the ornate language effortlessly, humanizing Prospero's flawed benevolence.

The effect is one of a man who, as in a dream, occasionally doubts his own control. Or, one might add, as a father to a daughter grown to womanhood. Carolyn Marie Monroe offers a winsome and purposeful Miranda, baffled by the surging of her own blood when she encounters the handsome Ferdinand (Jeffrey Frieders), the heir to Naples and the first man other than her father she has ever seen.

Peter Dylan O'Connor brings threatening craftiness to Caliban, the inhuman brood of the witch that once ruled the island. Traditionally, Caliban is a dim brute, the unregulated and savage id that Prospero tried but failed to tame. O'Connor, his costuming drawn from aboriginals of several continents, displays little of the stupidity that would allow him to mistake the drunken servants Stephano (Eric Ray Anderson) and Trinculo (deftly comic Kerry Ryan) for gods. Yet it also grants his conspiracy with them to murder Prospero and take Miranda a chance of success.

Hana Lass' throaty voice lends gravity to Ariel's fairy mischief, although her spritely movements are constrained by a wire bustle. Like O'Connor, she dispenses doses of malice and danger. She also takes on the singing of Jesse Sykes and Phil Wandscher's rather morose compositions, looking like a spidery Stevie Nicks in her high-button shoes and black lace.

(The play's style draws from the tradition of the Elizabethan masque, which incorporated dance and song into a thin storyline of fairy enchantment.)

Even though the idea of a dream banishes limits, the production seems equally notable for its restraint. Mount doesn't encourage his cast to engage in the glittery scenery-chewing that The Tempest too often invites, nor does he allow his earthbound framing device to weigh down the story's flights of fancy.

The idea flourishes best in Prospero's ultimate forgiveness of all and his dismissal of the players into the mists. At that instant, we can forgive a lot as well.

Seattle Shakespeare Company's The Tempest runs through June 28 at the Center House Theater, Seattle Center. Tickets: $22-$36; 206-733-8222 or seattleshakespeare.org.