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BY ANNE COLEMAN

In print | Published February 26, 2009

Shakespeare in a space station? Check. Shakespeare underwater? Check. Shakespeare in a ritzy restaurant? Check.

As directors struggle to breathe new life into Shakespeare, these 400 year-old plays have been relocated to some truly absurd locations. For the ladies behind this year’s Honors Acting and Set Design Thesis production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” this has translated into a spectacle of the mundane and, curiously enough, an absence of life. While four of the central roles are played by actual actresses, many of the play’s characters are channeled through inanimate objects, which range from action figures to stuffed monkeys.

With three women composing the entire cast of a play that has but one human female role, this production was never going to follow the party line, but the actresses Cara Arcuni ’09, Jackie Avitabile ’09 and Jessica Bear ’09, as well as set designer Kim Comer ’09, have made a valiant effort to remain faithful to the original text.

Their extensive cuts to the script haven’t eliminated any characters, and the narrative flow remains intact. With the exception of the occasional under-the-breath interjection between the actresses, as well as a few changes to lyrics of the numerous songs in the play, what you will hear and see is Shakespeare.

Whether you can tell that it is Shakespeare is another matter. As Bear put it, “On one level, we are presenting ‘The Tempest,” William Shakespeare’s story ‘The Tempest,’ but on the other hand it’s also a play about people presenting ‘The Tempest.’” Of all of Shakespeare’s plays, it is perhaps ‘The Tempest’ that lends itself best to self-reflexivity. The play abounds with spectacles and subtle references to the theater and performance. Act IV even makes reference to the Globe Theatre and the fleeting, artificial reality of the moment when Prospero tells Ferdinand, “Our revels are now ended. These our actors … are melted into air: … the great globe itself … shall dissolve … like this insubstantial pageant faded.”

To say that their “Tempest” employs the same style of reference to multi-layered reality is an understatement. Comer’s set could be a storage room in any office building in the world, but the presence of items like a model covered wagon and several very unsettling dolls, as well as the use of ceiling tiles as flooring, come together to remind spectators that the world is both pedestrian and an entirely foreign experience.

The actresses are never entirely Shakespeare’s characters, nor are they even characters in a play about putting on Shakespeare’s play. Each has a tenuous hold on an identity — loosely associated with a part of the power structure of the play — that shifts unpredictably between layers of reality. For the actresses, these complex layers of consciousness are a large part of their enduring interest in the piece. “I could watch the show and sit there and make theories the whole time [about who we are and what we’re doing],” Bear said.

The complexity of this approach has created some challenges in other elements of Shakespeare’s play. While the four women feel that their play remains true to the text, they were forced to pick and choose from the large supply of beautiful and powerful elements in the play. Magic, a core motif, has been transformed by the physical context: as Bear explains, “There is certainly magic in the show, but you see us perform the magic … If something is falling, it’s because you saw me throw it.”

This is an intriguing notion, but leaves the production suffering from a void left by the loss of mysticism and metaphysical energy; the stakes of the power struggle between Prospero and Caliban lack the volatile edge created in other productions by the physical and verbal recognition of Prospero’s staff.

The same directness that excises this magic eschews the lyrical quality of the verse, opting for accessibility. Still, for Avitabile, director Randolph Curtis Rand’s emphasis on a literal approach has had a positive influence on the text delivery. For many viewers, this literal approach will make Shakespeare more accessible.

At the same time, however, the actresses do not reject the traditional Elizabethan verse performance practice of breathing at line endings, so the combination promises to recognize the members of the audience who come from both ends of the sophistication spectrum.

The play is fast-paced, running about an hour and a half in length, and certainly achieves its mission of making Shakespeare’s writing more lucid for a modern audience. The lasting impression is a mix of comedy and a flirtation with the darker themes of revenge, colonialist oppression and entitlement.

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