"...a generosity of spirit in this production"

July 7, 2002 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Shakespeare’s The Tempest, currently playing at the Miniature Theatre of Chester, (through July 14) is full of grace - in the widest meaning of the word. The simply staged production has a special charm of its own.

Adapted by Vincent Dowling, the production employs only five actors; one knows this from the program but is somehow astonished when at curtain call there are only five people on stage. Although lines, even whole scenes and characters have been cut, the stage has been peopled by actors who magically slip from role to role but never do so onstage in our sight.(Vincent Dowling and Manon Halliburton in Dowling's adaptation of The Tempest, by William Shakespeare)

Magic, that of Prospero and that of theatre itself, is present everywhere. We never see Ariel. She is as invisible as the play’s lines tell us she is and can be seen only by Prospero. He sees her; we see it in his face. For us, she is only a voice in space.

Ariel is played by Manon Halliburton and can speak, invisibly, while Halliburton is on stage playing her larger role as Miranda, or her lesser ones as Sebastian or Triunculo. At the end of the play, we feel we can see her for a moment perched weightlessly on Prospero’s hand before he lifts the hand gently and releases her to freedom. She is strong in all her roles, speaking with clarity and sensitivity.

As Prospero, Downing is ever-present. Indeed the prologue attempts to make the play his return to the island and a reliving of events. (A program note fantasizing how it all might have played out differently is interesting and may have helped the actors with their sub-text, but slips out of the production and is better ignored.)

The scenes we see played out on the island are the familiar ones Shakespeare wrote. The magic island is evoked by five totem poles behind which Prospero is able not only to observe the action but, by controlling it, bring it to its ultimate forgiving grace.

Downing’s line readings enhance the poetry but give it its own freedom. From his first scene with Miranda in which he tells her of her heritage until the final moment when he frees them all, his is a masterful, but never over-shadowing performance. His very obvious presence tells us this is play, both for him and for us.

His supporting cast are fine. John Q. Bruce gives a usurping brother whom it is possible to forgive. Caliban, played by Robert Elliot, is a believable savage and especially moving in his famous sensitive lines concerning the music of the island. Chris Chenier is an appealing Ferdinand, although too many of his lines concerning his grief for his supposedly lost father are cut. All of these actors play other roles capably as well.

Overall, it is the tone of the production that succeeds.

There are cuts. The masque in Act IV is easily eliminated and this reviewer did not regret it. However, some of Ariel’s songs are gone and that's regretttable. And the ending of the play, due to the doubling, seems abrupt and lacking. But the young lovers are there playing chess with stones, and the “brave new world” (ironic or hopeful as one chooses to read it) is there. And the note of a shared forgiveness, freedom, and grace.

Grace. The word keeps dominating any reaction to this Tempest, flawed but charming, cut but still accessible. There is a generosity of spirit in this production that is pleasant to behold in a world that often seems to have forgotten what grace is.