The Tempest
William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company
Playhouse

During his stint as Artistic Director for the State Theatre Company, John Gaden has been closely associated with four Shakespearean productions – Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter’s Tale which he co-directed with Gale Edwards, as the lead in King Lear directed by Edwards, and now, The Tempest in which he directs but does not perform.

With little more than six months left with State, Gaden might have been tempted to play Prospero as a farewell gesture, abjuring his art and all that. He has, after all, much of the actor/manager style about him, which, benignly exercised, has won back a mainstream subscription base for the company. But therein, to coin a phrase, lies the rub. The necessary considerations, trade-offs, compromises and what-have-you, which, for its survival, any state company has to consider, will often be evident in the production of a classic work, especially Shakespeare.

Many playgoers are likely to have strongly-felt views about interpretation (and reviewers are no exception) with the consequence that a production may be dismissed as an irredeemable flop. Audiences may be even more divided and slow to accept challenges than with the sort of repertoire that can be tidily pigeon-holed as experimental or “daring”. In general, a less well-known work like The Winter’s Tale will have sufficient novelty to please – especially when, in the State version, Mary Moore’s design so effectively integrates the acting and direction. On the other hand, in last year’s Lear, the downbeat Beckettian acting collided with the dark grandeur of the design and audiences were mostly unsatisfactorily dislocated by the experience.

In The Tempest, a play founded on genial themes of reparation and repair, John Gaden presents a more conciliatory production which endeavours to let the play speak for itself. Of course, a play no more speaks for itself than a car drives itself. Even in the very avoidance of a specific or heightened reading of a text, casting, design and direction, choices inevitably indicate a point of view.

As a late play, The Tempest has often been seen as more personal than others in the canon. But if it is a last word – prescient, even elegiac – Shakespeare rather spoiled the effect by continuing to go about his business writing Henry VIII and putting a down-payment on the Blackfriars Theatre for long-term lease. There is good reason for seeing the play as special nevertheless. Substantially without sources, The Tempest is attractively eclectic. It mixes alchemical, anthropological and political speculations into a masque of exquisite poetic and dramatic concision and despite hesitancies in execution State have honoured the play with a modest and accessible production.

Edwin Hodgeman’s Prospero is a reluctant wizard. Magic for him is a means and no longer an end. His cell is his court; his island a laboratory for rehabilitation and a world made new. Hodgeman is restrained and assured, even a shade anti-social. Interestingly, his performance warmed noticeably later in the season, liberating Ulli Birve as Miranda in particular.

John Gaden and designer Ken Wilby have opted for a ceremonial, almost gothically Jacobean production. Prospero and Miranda wear Arcadian white cotton and in a Brookian touch the mage descends on a trapeze. Daniel Witton’s Ariel is also aerobically aloft; Peter Pan as satyr. Overdressed in mannerist black cloaks and plumes with chevron trim, Alonso (John Noble), Gonzalo (Ron Graham) and the brace of lords, Sebastian and Antonio (Patrick Frost and Robert Meldrum) generally sulk, flounce and intone through what are awkward scenes in the play and some of the least satisfactory in this production.

In contrast, the well-judged interplay between Paul Blackwell’s Trinculo and Francis Greenslade’s Stephano combines artful clowning with a shrewd attention to the text. Similarly, Steven Vidler’s toothy Caliban has a strength and lyricism which brings his world of freshes, filberts and scamels vividly to life.

Despite the quality of these individual achievements, however, the production has a tendency to fragment. Nigel Levings’ illusionist lighting, Ian Farr’s musical miscellany and Ken Wilby’s island – monolithic, steeply-raked and featureless – maroon and separate events and performers more than the narrative requires. But amidst the chess-like blocking of the final scenes, Hodgeman’s Prospero has a gravity and humanity which brings resonance to the epilogue and in so doing State reminds us how well this remarkable play still breathes as theatre.

“Weather Report” The Adelaide Review, No.64, June, 1989, p.22.