Des McAnuff’s 2010 Stratford Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest starring Christopher Plummer is less like a violent storm at sea than a warm spring shower that freshens the flowers.
Plummer delivers a pleasing, avuncular Prospero who is mostly good company and who finds the most comedy in the banished Duke of Milan’s lines. This allows Miranda (Trish Lindstrom) to be funnier, too; and the lightness extends through the whole production, especially into the exquisite and hilarious clowning of Trinculo (Bruce Dow) and Stephano (Geraint Wyn Davies).
These choices cause several problems, however. A post-anger Prospero, who has already chosen forgiveness over vengeance, drains the play of much of its drama. It also makes the character of Prospero make less sense. Prospero is a benevolent bully, and Shakespeare gives you plenty of examples of both benevolence and bullying throughout the play. When McAnuff underplays the bullying, it leaves the viewer feeling something is a little off.
This feeling is intensified by the casting of a white-skinned and red-haired Miranda, an African Caliban (Dion Johnstone), and an Indonesian Ariel (Julyana Soelistyo). I’m not a huge fan of “critique of colonialism” productions of The Tempest, but I can see their point, and McAnuff seems to have gone out of his way to emphasize the critique and then dismiss it.
On the plus side, Plummer is a delight throughout the production and gets to stretch his wings at the end of The Tempest, when he is renouncing his powers. The emotion of these scenes is intensified by the fact Plummer was 80 at the time, so that the actor and the role merged.
Finally, this is a filmed stage play, but it is a play filmed with great care. You never lose the sense you are watching a play, performed before a live audience, but at the same time you don’t feel that the camera work has been inhibited by the constraints of the theater’s physical space.
Overall, I liked this production of The Tempest and encourage you to seek it out. It is currently available on Netflix in the States.
it’s my fav S/p because I scored a A in my uni finals for it! I am however a bit bored with Plummer being avuncular……
I was disappointed because I think Plummer can rock. His Ralph Nickleby, his work in “Beginners” for example. But in the end, as you can see, I was okay with his performance.