The Tempest at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival 2021

Or: The Open Hand

I’d posit, dear reader that stage magic is the very best kind there is. The motion of two bodies, or one skilled actor imbuing an intimate object with supernatural heaviness or speed, called to the enchantment by the hearts and minds of one to several hundred spectators, is something truly wondrous.

 Sara Bruner’s Tempest is replete with these self same wonders, this rough magic here made smooth and shining. From the first moments when Joe Wegner as pale-eyed Ariel, concurs a storm from a chorus of singing mariners, the crew and nobles of Naples blown from spar to spar, and Ferdinand (Domonique L. Champion) is plunged into the brine, sucked down below the waves on stage in a brilliant trifecta of sound, motion, and performance.

The tale of isolation, vengeance, and forgiveness, continues, usually under Wegner’s specific and sparkling conjuring (Ariel as flopping fisherman, Ariel as DJ) through Efren’s Delgadillo Jr’s set of billowing sheet and jutting scaffold, that summons both forest canopy, swaying deck, and plastic sheeted waste.

Unfortunately, all the cavorting and swinging does cut into the flow of the speech, long pauses mar the flow, and in the game of catch up that follows, the language is more likely to be bowed over than set to a shining ripple. Some of the conceits also are stronger than others; the bottomless pit downstage center that swallows many a character with a reverberating scream? Beautifully employed and endlessly wondrous. Wrapping your enemies in slow moving harpy wings and entangling them in the set? Not so much.

It’s a shame too, since Bruner’s cut of the Tempest includes so much more of the snide and cutting comments of fork-tongued Antonio (David Anthony Smith) and Sebastian (Julian Remulla, who mixes resentment with grief), as well as rebuttals from the shipwrecked court (sumptuously attired in rich and stylishly foreshortened suits by Helen Q. Huang). We also get a delightful new take on Stephano (Jillian Kates) and Trinculo (Jodi Dominic) in a debauched rally of song, dance, and girl bonding. (It’s also a great joy for fans of the festival too see Kates and Dominic try out their considerable skills in new meadows.)

At the center of it, Prospero (Aled Davies) remains the burning coal, heating the whole evening. Davies comes to us with a cold core of anger, rage at his state, the threat to his life and his daughter Miranda (Angela Utrea), that factories and bubbles up with him, even as he attempts to master it, and choose the rarer action. His rich voice, brushed to a shine, hits a sure and steady stride throughout the play, the fabled speeches swooping around him as he burnishes his power, like an attendant spirt. (though the decision to end the play without the gentle epilog, leaving Ariel to pack up the ball, is curious and more than a little upsetting.)

But a truly fine counterpoint to the evening is Champion’s Ferdinand. Truly a sterling addition to the festival, Champion gives the Prince turned patient Log Man an infusion of energy, bounding about the stage and fully submitting to the magical properties of the Wizard and his Spirit, making the magic work, but keeping his expressions fully recognizable and human, the fear of having his own weapon turn against his throat, the tobnguetiedness of a beautiful face, the leaping joy-twisted shouts of the desirously happy. (he’s matched in his mother Queen Alonso (Jessika D. Williams), who’s own mastery of verse and projection do much to rescue the production’s pace.

This Tempest, while grand in its scope and wild in its imagination, is at its best in the human moments (my favorite, in the reunion between Mother and Son, often overslept with tearful dignity and grand oaths, Williams checks Champion over for scrapes and bruises and untucked clothing and takes him aside to be sure he’s fair marrying a girl he met three hours ago. It’s so maternal and it’s so true.) It’s the same kind of stage magic, born of artistry and the attention of a hundred pairs of eyes, that can be captured nowhere else.