"Noises, Sounds and Sweet Airs": Northern Broadsides' The Tempest (review)

Northern Broadsides' Tempest was produced by the company in association with the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme. The show was directed by Barrie Rutter and toured to twelve English venues over an eighteen week period from February to June 2007. Subsequently, it was hosted by the Culture and Education Section of the British Embassy in China for performances at the Capital Theatre, Beijing and the Arts Theatre, Shanghai. This review is based on a performance at the Viaduct (Northern Broadsides' home venue), a small theatre located in the converted cellarage of a Victorian Cloth Mill in Dean Clough, Halifax. The Viaduct's stage is minimalist. Set on a flagstone and concrete floor, a traverse playing area is roofed by low-vaulted ceilings and decked out with exposed architectural ironwork. Technical paraphernalia is of necessity kept to an absolute minimum and actor-audience relationships are considered of paramount importance: performers act at spitting distance from spectators who are often bathed in the same light; all on-stage action takes place on a seven-by-twelve meter playing space with no possibilities for flying, trucking or trap-work.

Built to work in venues as diverse as the West Yorkshire Playhouse (Leeds), the Stephen Joseph Theatre (Scarborough) and the Georgian Theatre (Richmond), Lis Evans's economical touring set sat equally comfortably against the austere minimalism of the Viaduct. Two immovable, concentric-circular, wooden-planked rostra were located absolute centre stage, with a steel scaffold-pole (with wood-edged foot rungs welded to it) placed at one edge of the top rostrum. Atop this, a symbolic crow's nest helped to suggest the mast of an imaginary vessel. From the opposing edge of the rostra, the slimmest of planks was hinged upwards towards the scaffold pole at forty-five degrees, signifying a foresail, tethered by a thin steel guy. At one end of the traverse space an arched stone vault (part of the space's original architecture) contained an array of musical instruments, played by various cast members at numerous moments throughout the show. At the other end of the space, in front of a heavy stone wall (again original architecture), three ceiling-to-floor banners hung (each fifty centimeters wide and made from creased muslin in blue, earth and calico), together with an array of knotted ropes.

The show began with slow vibraphone and accordion music as the nobility entered and mounted their rostra-vessel to the raucous singing of a sea shanty about drunken maidens. Shakespeare's 1.1 gradually made its way over the new-written song as tensions between mariners and nobles were both augmented by and subsumed in conflicts between Shakespearean and extra-Shakespearean elements of production. Eventually, three black female actors (Nicola Gardner, Simone Saunders and Belinda Everett) entered and controlled the sonic squall as a tri-bodied Ariel. The spirit(s) were dressed in earthy tones, their movements accompanied by vigorous offstage drum rhythms. Split in this way and supported by powerful percussive underscoring, this Ariel seemed capable of emerging anywhere as s/he oversaw the raucous elements conjured by Shakespeare's verse. As the scene continued, mariners' verse patterns likewise began to be carried on and echoed by the drum kit—augmenting the power and viscerality of Shakespeare's aural assault. Gradually, the two concentric circles of the central set were lit and misted from below, causing shafts of bright white light and traces of vapor to emerge from small slits between rostra decking planks as the tiny ship split and was lost.

Following the storm, Prospero (Barrie Rutter) removed a homespun cloak and conducted the exposition of 1.2 with the passion and clarity that has become characteristic of Northern Broadsides' house style. Miranda (Sarah Cattle) was both attentive and reverential before being lulled asleep by slow, sustained vibraphone music (a method of slumber inducement that became characteristic of the production). When Ariel entered, Gardner, Saunders, and Everett moved in stylized patterns, engaging in individual and choric dialogue with Prospero, with the effect that the...