THE TEMPEST: Shakespeare all shook up at the Citadel
Citadel Artistic Director Daryl Cloran promised us a “Reimagine Season” this year – and has largely validated that mandate.
He is closing his year with an elemental, uncompromising, inventive staging of Shakespeare’s last great play, The Tempest – performed by hearing and deaf actors in both English and American Sign Language. It certainly demonstrates how theatre in general, and the Citadel in particular, continues to make room for the new.
Shakespearean purists may not be happy. For those who are looking for a purely theatrical adventure, staged with boundless imagination and constantly surprising – this production is for you. You definitely won’t be bored.
The Tempest runs on the Shoctor stage of the Citadel through May 12.
The Bard packed this play with magic and music – so much so that it invokes a pervasive spirit of enchantment. The Tempest is regarded as Shakespeare’s valedictory. Like its complex and contradictory main character – an aging necromancer who renounces magic – Shakespeare put down his quill after writing it in 1610, said “goodbye” to theatre, and a short time later, his life.
The story of how this remarkable Citadel production came about is interesting in itself. A few years back, Cloran met Josette Bushell-Mingo, the charismatic, London-born, Swedish-based actor, playwright and director (who was also nominated for an Oliver Award for her performance of Rafiki in the West End production of The Lion King) – and at the time the Artistic Director for the Swedish National Theatre for the Deaf.
Out of the meeting came a bold idea. Their concept was to stage The Tempest featuring hearing and deaf actors performing together on stage. Not with the traditional view of hearing actors talking while deaf performers “sign” in the corners – but with the cast participating together in a full reading of the play. As Bushell-Mingo observed in an interview, “Sign language does something that spoken Shakespeare cannot do – in imagination, emotional depth and cerebral reaction.”
The project required deaf actors to concentrate on projecting meaning to hearing audiences – and hearing actors to learn American Sign Language. After a month in the Citadel-Banff Centre’s Professional Theatre program, and several weeks of specific rehearsal, the production premiered on Thursday night.
Does it work? Depends on what you’re looking for. Its delights are many. The play begins in Drew Facey’s massive set (the entire front half of a period Italian sea-going sailing ship) which is caught in a magical mighty thunder and lightning storm. There is a real rainstorm pelting the set – actors and all.
One of our more creative composer-sound designers, Dave Clarke has outdone himself (with the considerable help of lighting designer Bonnie Beecher) in creating a soundscape that ranges from subtle to stentorian and maintains throughout the entire production. Brilliant! Wait until you’ve heard the devil dogs loosed into the theatre.
Here’s the story: Prospero (Lorne Cardinal) has summoned his captive sprite Ariel to create the great storm because he wants revenge on the evil Duke of Milan (Derek Kwan), who set Prospero loose on the sea with his infant daughter Miranda 12 years before – expecting them to die.
It doesn’t take long for the differences from the Shakespeare canon to arise in this production.
The cast is wildly diverse. The King is a Queen, the actors are of both sexes (and a number of in-betweens as well), their racial backgrounds are a veritable United Nations. Although nearly half are deaf, the play is not hard to follow, and the innate balletic beauty of sign language is a continuing joy to watch. Some actors seem to be fluent in both languages as the signs vault across the stage. There are eight different Ariels, each a facet of the magical spirit’s character. At one point a single actor stands at the front of the stage silently signing – while the rest form a Greek Chorus signing in unison behind him.
All of this can be summed up in Miranda – usually portrayed as pale and as innocent as an English crocus. In this production she is played by Thurga Kanagasekarampillai, a veteran of a number of deaf and hearing productions, and who proudly defines herself as a “deaf Sri Lankan Tamil Canadian queer artist.”
The play starts at high energy and doesn’t let up – which works well with Cardinal’s declamatory acting style. Every once in a while a scene or an actor breaks out of the surrounding clamour. There’s a lovely scene between Miranda and the young Ferdinand (Braydon Dowler-Coltman). She finds him on the beach after the wreck and, obviously attracted, they begin an intimate conversation which includes the tender learning of each other’s language. Nadien Chu manages an uninterrupted and effective monologue as Queen Alonsa.
But mostly be prepared to be overcome by Bushell-Mingo’s directorial flourishes that take many liberties with the original work. The play begins with Prospero being tortured. All of the Ariels rise out of the hold of the ship like zombies in a Toby Hooper movie. Twice the Queen is run through by a knife, but is brought back by Prospero (cue more lightening). The director has added elements of the dance, physical theatre, a couple of spirited sword fights, the Last Supper and a scene from Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare’s 409 year old play has been considerably shook-up here. Much of the Bard’s poetry has been sacrificed, and Bushell-Mingo just can’t seem to forgive the cruelty the magician shows to everyone in the first half of the play. Somehow, she also manages to shrink the entire experience to a 90 spare minutes – when a standard production of The Tempest usually clocks in at about two and a half hours.
For those willing to take the leap, this daring production probes deeply into our cultural understanding of how theatre can be presented.
Photos by Ian Jackson
READ MORE: Reviews of the Citadel Theatre’s other plays this season:
The Candidate/The Party, April 2019
Miss Bennett: Christmas at Pemberley, Nov. 2018
