Review: TEMPEST, Pleasance Theatre

We're in a storm, a storm of flashing lights, broken masts and wailing strings and synths. We know the title had dropped its definite article and we suspect - with good cause as it transpires - that Shakey's last play has dropped a bit more too, and added plenty in its place. Soon Ariel, or her dismembered, disturbing voice, is swirling around the room, our tables and chairs now feeling like the saloon bar on the Titanic - David Balfour's sound design making for a very tempestuous Tempest indeed, serving James Meteyard's adaptation and Jasmine Morris's music very effectively.

Not all of it works - as The Man himself knew, ambition often comes at a price, and gig theatre can jolt and jar to the extent that the showmanship overpowers the show - and there are times when it does here. But, more often than not, the carnivalesque, especially with London enjoying a high bright sun for the first time in months, harks back to the raucous crowds of the early 17th century. Songs, poetry and laughter fill the air and the house needs no second invitation to get involved, joining nine multi-talented actor-musicians to create a shared experience that is as far from the soulless stuff they taught us at school as one can get.

Kate Littlewood's Prospero bangs that staff of hers like Lorca's Bernarda Alba and loves Miranda (Ruby Crepin-Glyne, who sings beautifully) but doesn't treat Caliban (baritone Alexander Bean) with quite that level of cruelty that can alienate a 21st century audience. Gigi Zahir - in drag - and Eleanor House, play Trinculo, the jester and Stephano, the (Glaswegian, no really) drunk very broad indeed, too far over the top. Some stretched double-casting makes the third party quite hard to pin down.

That decision, like the slightly patronising acknowledgements of ASM Ibraheem when various props and mics were brought on stage, didn't quite work and being whisked in and out of Shakespeare's language, with its Elizabethan argot and rhythms to which the ear needs time to adjust, obstructed rather than enhanced the storytelling. The biggest issue for following a convoluted plot, was an old problem with amplified voices in fringe venues - too many actors spoke too quickly and we lost their words. If some characters' speeches can be heard with crystal clarity, why can't we hear all of them? This company is not alone in irritating audiences in this way by any means, but we really deserve better.

Let's end on a positive note. Arialists can get a bit samey in a circus, with the long curtainy thing they wrap themselves in to twist and fall impressively turning a bit meh when you've seen it once. Loren O'Dair's work as the sprite Ariel lends the gig-theatre spectacle a whole new perspective, hanging above us as a symbol of Prospero's power to conjure weapons from the skies, then diving to ground level to come amongst us, an unpredictable, half-malevolent, half-benign supernatural being.

As bombs rain down on other European cities and pleas come for a no-fly zone to be imposed, I thought of Ariel as a servant of those, like Prospero, with the power to do evil and good and hoped one man might, like the sorcerer himself, put down his staff forever.

Tempest is at the Pleasance Theatre until 3 April

Photo Lidia Crisafulli

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