The
Tempest -- Spring 2010
 |
| Trinculo,
if you prove a mutineer--The next tree...!!!! |
Shakespeare’s
Tempest, appropriately enough, begins with a terrible storm of awesome
proportion. Caught within
its grasp, the royal party of the Queen of Naples, her son Ferdinand
and their attendant lords
and servants are tossed helplessly in the roaring sea-storm, their
ship spectacularly foundered (has it?) in the gale. The court members
are hence sundered and stranded them on a seemingly-deserted isle.
But this particular Tempest
soon proves unnatural: it is but the magical machinations of Prospero,
revealed to be the long exiled Duke of Milan, now a sorcerer of great
power with a score to settle. Along with his beautiful and compassionate
daughter Miranda, he has lived upon the island for 20 years, resourcefully
providing for their sustainance and harnessing supernatural and natural
forces through his hermetic arts. Bounteous Fortune has chosen this
very day to favor him, for his enemies, including his usurping brother
Antonio, are finally within his grasp! Payback is a wench!
Dispersed about the enchanted
isle in groups, the castaways search for each other, encountering
airy spirits tasked by Prospero to perform his plan to perfection.
Miranda and Ferdinand are drawn together to meet and fall in love;
the Queen’s party are tempted and tormented by phantasmagoric
visions for their wrongs; whilst the hapless clowns, Stephano and
Trinculo encounter Prospero’s servant man-monster Caliban, to
comic effect, calypso, (and much dipsomania).
Fertile plots abound, even
in this rarified clime – the begrudging Caliban seeks to overthrow
his master, enlisting the clowns, who are more than inebriated enough
to undertake the foolhardy task. Antonio, not content to rest in his
ill-gotten Dukedom, furthers his own lofty ambitions in collusion
with the Queen’s treacherous sister Sebastiana.
Above all, masterfully
orchestrating his subtle aims, Prospero carefully gathers all the
threads of his delicate puppetry together for an appropriate (though
ambivalent) conclusion.
Intrigue, romance, wondrous faerie
magick and pratfall hilarity abound in our two-hour tour of Prospero’s
Isle...!
Haddonfield
Friends Meeting
45 Friends Ave.
Haddonfield, NJ
| Friday,
May 21 @ 8pm
Saturday, May 22 @ 8pm
Sunday, May 23 @ 3pm |
Friday, May
28 @ 8pm
Saturday, May 29 @ 8pm
Sunday, May 30 @ 3pm |
