The Tempest

The Globe Touring Ensemble’s 2021 production of The Tempest opened with a collision of styles, as a swinging jazz number performed by the entire cast segued into the plaintive tones of two recorders. These mournful notes built to a shrill pitch, as the storm scene began in earnest. The mingling of moods in these first moments prefigured how this production would balance anxiety against the irreverent joy of community—an apt emotional palette amid the easing COVID-19 restrictions of summer 2021.

Of course, a bifurcated structure has always been embedded in the play-text itself. This production emphasized, rather than complicated, the very different moods of the plot and sub-plot. Trinculo and Stephano’s drinking scenes provided riotous hilarity, which offset the studied unease of Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban. However, the slapstick buffoonery of the ship’s passengers somewhat eclipsed the pathos of the island’s inhabitants. There emerged a faint unwillingness to linger on the more sincere, or troubling, parts of the play. This wasn’t solely directorial: the audience themselves certainly seemed to be seeking comfort, rather than challenge, after many lockdowns away from the theater. More than once, lines such as Miranda’s “Your tale, sir, would cure deafness” (1.2.106) or Caliban’s “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/Is I know how to curse” (1.2.364–5) were delivered seriously by actors, but met with uncertain titters from groundlings. If these unexpected reactions discomfited the actors, they did an admirable job of concealing it.

Yet, it must be said, this light-hearted mood was facilitated by a relatively straightforward production, which did little to highlight the play’s darker aspects or push them in new directions. Some promising avenues of characterization were left only partly explored. For example, the casting of Mark Desebrock as an unusually young Prospero allowed a different kind of vulnerability to come to the fore. In a time when there is much talk of white male fragility, Desebrock’s visibly uncertain and anxious patriarch felt doubly well-judged and worth further development. Meanwhile, Emma Ernest as Ariel was a wonderfully tense presence onstage, twitching her fingers and delivering lines with an abrupt jerkiness that occasionally broke into a sob. But Ernest’s misery in enslavement meant her character elicited more sympathy than fear, which slightly undermined Ariel’s more fearsome guises—as when, in one of the most spectacular moments of the performance, she appeared in the balcony space with blood-dipped blades curving claw-like from her wrists. Similarly, Stephenson Ardern-Sodje’s Caliban was not always as formidable as the character often is. He had an explosive entrance: after the usual cry of “There’s wood enough within” (1.2.315), the trapdoor slammed open to reveal a face contorted with rage. His sudden leering when Prospero referenced his attempted assault of Miranda was also powerfully threatening. Yet the cuts made to the script seemed to have truncated some of his interactions with Prospero and Miranda, and many of his lines didn’t find the space to expand as they might.

However, the failure of these more profound moments to land meant that the comic scenes shone all the more. The energy in the Globe Theatre palpably lifted as Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano brought the audience into hysterics. Colm Gormley’s deft confidence and timing (perhaps owing to his past background in stand-up comedy) stood out in a production in which speech seemed occasionally to be a little rushed, muttered, or likely to fall through the gaps. His Trinculo was a triumph, and his Gonzalo also raised a laugh or two, especially his line about an “unstanched wench” (1.1.47). Katy Secombe was equally masterful as both Stephano and Sebastian, carrying herself with a swaggering impudence that filled the stage. Her gleeful surrendering of responsibility played off beautifully against Gormley’s occasional mock-worry or anger. Anna Crichlow’s proud, commanding Alonso provided a counter-foil of seriousness that only intensified the merriness of her insubordinates. The chemistry between Gormley, Secombe, and Ardern-Sodje was a joy to experience, and a credit to all three performers.

Miranda and Ferdinand had their share in the laughter, too, however. Sara Lessore was a pleasingly feisty and capable Miranda, hoisting logs and thrusting them at her hapless lover, played by Tom Chapman as a devoted but likeable fool. A shifting but equal power dynamic between the pair, as Miranda explained the island and Ferdinand the mainland, was brought to the fore and gave their union an overall evenness. This typically saccharine pairing was more compelling for being more humorously presented: their meeting on the beach, where they comically mimed before realizing they could speak the same language, was particularly well done.

Ariel (Emma Ernest) in The Tempest, dir. Brendan O’Hea. Globe Touring Ensemble, Shakespeare’s Globe, 2021. Photo by Marc Brenner, courtesy of Shakespeare’s Globe.

There, as elsewhere, part of the strength of the comedy rested on physical movement at a distance. This technique, which had been developed for the purposes of the contact-free performance, was executed so cleverly that it was hard to remember that the actors were social-distancing from one another. If anything, it seemed to have made the scenes funnier. The production wisely used stage properties, such as an axe, a blanket, and more, not only to mediate the space between actors, but as an opportunity to ramp up the farcical dimensions of the play. The actors employed the props to throw blows that were miles off, prompting their colleagues to reel or spin around in shock horror, to the delight of audiences. This non-contact physical choreography made an interesting counterpoint to, and almost overshadowed, Prospero’s more traditional movements with his magical birch rod, which compelled other actors to sleep or be still from afar.

In fact, unlike the sometimes-tentative soundscape, the visual elements of the performance were confident, memorable, and engaging. The costumes formed a cogent visual vocabulary for the social ecosystem of the island. Ariel’s status as a being of the air was evoked by the feathers that were woven into her hair, while the metallic sea-green face paint that covered the top half of her face, like a visor, was a neat shorthand for the spirit’s second sight. The same pigment was visible on Prospero’s beard, marking Prospero’s use of Ariel as an instrument for his magical bidding (in light of which her visor might be seen as more of a blindfold). Pros-pero and Miranda wore garments of moss-green, soft greys, and earthy browns, whose raw edges and trailing threads bespoke the gradual erosion of their past splendor. Ariel and Caliban were also dressed in these colors, but encircled with leather gauntlets, belts, and harnesses, an effective, silent reminder of the bondage in which Prospero kept them.

By contrast, the ship’s passengers were dressed in richly colored velvet jackets with gold epaulettes, their shine so bright as to almost veer into tackiness, an impression compounded by gilt plastic crowns. The Neapolitan king looked, rightly, out of place and ostentatious against the quiet gravitas of Prospero’s simple woolen cloak. But the entire cast was united by their sturdy black Dr. Martens, worn across all the Touring Ensemble’s plays this season. It was a choice as if to indicate that this summer, the performers were ready for anything—despite the fact that in 2021 the company would not be touring across the UK, let alone the world, as they usually do each year.

Yet, perhaps the Globe was the best place for them to be this year, after all. Amongst all the uncertainty, disappointment, and anxiety of seemingly never-ending lockdowns, the special magic of the “wooden O” felt all the more precious. When Miranda, gesturing to the audience, exclaimed wonderingly “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world/That has such people in’t” (5.1.183–4), a rare moment of stillness rippled around the crowd. For, just as the Prospero and Miranda who return to Naples cannot be the two who left it, being together at the theater has been changed by the collective experience of the pandemic. The Tempest is a tale of anxiety and hope, of raucous joy and deep sorrow, of identity that is lost, remade, and then ultimately forsaken once more. For Prospero and Miranda, the magic of the island is, by the end of the play, relinquished, cast away with the books and staff so they can begin their new lives. Gone; but not forgotten. At play’s end, Prospero returned, briefly, to the stage, to hear Ariel’s ethereal song once more. His wistful smile was a reminder of how experiences remain with us, even as we step—uncertainly, bravely, hopefully—into a new world of our own.