The Tempest, and: Richard III, and: Romeo and Juliet (review)

Three recent productions in Houston demonstrated three distinct approaches to adapting Shakespearean texts for performance. Classical Theatre Company’s The Tempest retained nearly all of the text, in tandem with an inventive design. Main Street Theater and the Prague Shakespeare Festival heavily cut and rearranged the lengthy Richard III so that it ran less than three hours, interspersed with multi-media devices such as texts and video footage. Houston Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet dispensed with the text altogether, conveying the story through Ben Stevenson’s choreography and Sergei Prokofiev’s music.

Classical Theatre Company’s mission is to “boldly re-envision classical drama,” and the opening image of their Tempest provided a strikingly original vision for the play. The set was constructed entirely of trash: strings of plastic bottles hung upstage left for curtains, plastic netting covered the floor, and a central arch was composed of plastic chairs, toys, and household implements under bubble wrap. The overall effect was that Prospero had created his “cell” out of garbage that had washed up on the beach. Director John Johnston noted in the program that his inspiration for the design was the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which he described as “both repulsive and in some aspects beautiful . . . a place created by human egocentricity, but . . . [which] constantly contradicts itself.” The set was likewise ingenious, colorful, vibrant, a mark of Prospero’s desperation and self-absorption. Many costumes also incorporated trash and scavenged items: Miranda’s dress was patched with different bits of cloth and she wore incongruous men’s boots; Caliban’s shirt included bits of plastic and a cracked CD; Prospero had draped many layers (including a frayed bath towel) around himself, and brandished a staff held together with duct tape and crowned with a halo of plastic Easter eggs.

The trash-filled set characterized the island as a place that had been intensely constructed by Prospero, and which was both remote from, and a continual reminder of, the outside world. When telling Miranda about his brother’s betrayal, he brought out little dolls crafted from scraps that he used to illustrate his story. Prospero later manipulated these voodoo-like dolls to confine and torture the lords, and Ariel...