William Hutt as Prospero and Martha Henry as Miranda in 1962
Martha Henry’s Prospero gazes down from the upper level of the Stratford Festival stage as we enter the auditorium to witness Shakespeare’s assumed last play, The Tempest. We are the audience and essential to Henry’s, Shakespeare’s and Prospero’s respective conjurations of realities. We are made so, as she looks down and, staff in hand, literally sticks it to us all.
In Antoni Cimolino’s production of the play, realities blend in theatrical fashion and we are thus implied to be part of the art in this mirror of drama. We hear movement of water and we hear, nay, feel, a loud thumping, as we experience a chaos of bodies and sounds. In this setting, this realm, Prospero speaks. The beginning of Shakespeare is the word and through words we begin to exist.
It’s a distinct voice – Martha Henry’s – we know well from decades of hearing it, and now it quiets the storm. We gaze up at the great hollow of the Festival theatre – a space which can be daunting to actors who might fade into it– and the voice seems to draw in the darkness of unfilled silence. It seems a voice that walks between benediction and theatrical pronouncement and, in speech, shapes itself into precise authority.
We also see Mamie Zwettler’s Miranda, a performance that has grown in subtle spontaneities, as delicate counterpoint it seems, since her speech unlike Prospero’s is exploratory and tentative and new to experience. Hers is also a strangely potent, achingly pure, contrast to the cruelty or inanity of humans revealed by the playwright, of which this play’s production has many sharply-realized examples. If hers is a “brave new world,” Prospero, as suggested through Henry’s voice, has seen too much of it
And then Ariel, a spirit, appears, a creation from imagination and our need to escape our ultimate impotence against death– don’t we all need an Ariel, a Puck? He is discreetly fantastical, self-indulgent in his gig of powers, and must be kept in his place, a task which Prospero easily achieves. He is now more assertive than in the run’s beginning.
Here we find, to my memory at least of a performance a month ago, a crucial shift in Henry’s Prospero. She now displays a theatrical assertiveness that delights in itself as performance among others, as much as it does so as authority. Prospero does hold a hand full of aces, and she keeps Ariel not quite dangling at the end of her staff, her wand. But in much of what she does, she seems kindly and playful as if she is freer now to call her own shots. She now conveys a wisdom in her mercies, not one born from bitterness but, it seems, from compassion.
Prospero now quite literally dances to the lines she speaks and in the presence of daughter Miranda she does a self-satisfied maternal strut. This Prospero is having fun and, no axe to grind, transmits some pain to Caliban with a flick of the finger. She also enjoys a good verbal battle which, with the inherent authority of Henry’s voice, she is bound to win. But the mother-daughter connection is much more than power games and Prospero is touchingly protective of her offspring and her intimate embrace resonates with palpable love.
We realize here, moreover, an intriguing before and after situation, since Henry long ago was Miranda on this same stage to William Hutt’s Prospero. We wonder what her own Miranda was like back then and what kind of Prospero Zwettler, who here seems ripe to mature, might one day be. Prospero and Miranda here have a seasoned and mutually-valued relationship and each knows how far to push the other and when to show love instead. How much of Henry’s Miranda is now in her Prospero?
Caliban as a character can take many routes and here Michael Blake, under Antoni Cimolino’s directorial staff, seems more a choreographed, weaving, mischievous energy – a serpentine motion that is beautiful to watch in motion – than an internally rotting evil we should fear. At the end, Prospero kisses the top of Caliban’s head and Miranda looks into his eyes as if they show something she might one day want to – have to -understand.
In a production that feels more domestic than metaphysical, Caliban is the ‘bad’ misbehaving child and not a tendency to evil in human nature. He is not arbitrarily malignant as, say, Donald Trump who does make us sick to be of the same human species as he. This Caliban disturbs more for what he may do than for what he is. He is driven, but he can be stopped.
Many performances in this production give compact but rich insight into human nature, behavior, and variety. Rod Beattie’s Gonzalo is firmly both decent and lovably tedious in his rambling. David Collins’ Alonso is solid in authority but definitely broken -and thus unreachable – by the loss of his son.
Stephen Ouimette’s hapless and endearingly hopeless Trinculo is delightfully wide-eyed and detailed in his human simplicity, while the Stephano of Tom McCamus is broadly present and laid back and self-inflated with drink. None here force their characters on us and are thus more human. They grow on us. We wonder about each one.
As the second half begins, Prospero again sits above like a stage director making notes at rehearsal. She watches her pairing of Miranda and Sebastien Heins’ Ferdinand take shape. Prospero does a slight but telling twitch at being referred to as crabby, but she is not affronted since part of Prospero’s wisdom is maternally experienced and therefore maternally wise.
Not so Miranda who is too unworldly to play society’s game of male superiority as she easily totes the tree stump that has wearied her clueless and lovably enthusiastic Ferdinand. Their mutual guilelessness, enthusiasm for each other, and innocence are joys to behold in this consistently engaging production.
The powerful but aging Prospero is cleaning up the house of her life, perhaps of “a heaviness that’s gone”. What then is the reason that Henry emphatically stresses the word ‘stuff’ in ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’ Why does her relief seem so palpable on “I’ll drown my book?” Because Henry can easily twist or twirl a phrase many ways into playful accusation or punch hard dismissal or spontaneous sometimes arbitrary lightness of being, we listen for irony and deep human concern in all she says.
Prospero’s “They shall be themselves” does sound both freeing and also woeful, since human nature seen by the playwright has wrought much illustration of humanity’s darker side. Little wonder then that Prospero’s Epilogue ends “As you from crimes would pardoned be. Let your indulgence set me free.” Art can do only so much with humankind. But art is not escape from what we are.
My first shot at this production of the Tempest saw in it a fitting vehicle for a unique actress in her 80th year to command a large theatrical space with authority and nuance in voice and movement. My second sees an even more humanized and at times almost neighborly show. We believe the maternal presence of Henry that reaches out with visibly experienced insight into other lives, those on stage and ultimately our own. We trust her insights.
Director Cimolino relies here more on fluidity of motion and careful etching of character, than confrontation with existence. He counts too on theatrical spectacle – say, of a very overwhelming and much-discussed black bird – to give us chills, than making human action itself give us worry about our inner darknesses. As a result, I feel delightfully entertained, touchingly warmed, but too often, I do feel let off the hook.
Of course, the question remains throughout The Tempest as to how much art can actually reach into and remedy our lives as we live in this world – and how much art should distract us from troubles we cannot change. Playwright Edward Bond once told me that the need of theatres to sell tickets, and thus be inoffensive, and the need of a playwright like Shakespeare to tell the truth about this world are certainly at odds. Are Sebastien and Alonso in their unthreatening smiles at the end still the would-be murderers of Alonso they were earlier?
Still, although this production doesn’t get to feel too dirty with humanity and its foul deeds, it does reveal the poignant beauty of human beings alone and together. A cast to die for does bring a variety of characters to entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking life. And, after all, I did make a note as I watched, “Go see it again, open your heart, and your heart may, for moments here and there, be filled.”