Can I tell you a secret? I've always wanted to hear Caliban's ethereally beautiful 'The isle is full of noises' speech with Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond in the background. David Gilmour's electric trills and sweet airs are a perfect complement to the fragile beauty of the verse. So thank you to Magdalen Players for (almost) making that midsummer dream come true. The music throughout this production of The Tempest is gently overpowering, flowing with the natural rhythms of the island, while still providing a deep, electric thrum that crackles with pent-up magical power. And during that speech it becomes a gorgeous variation on Shine On.
The full-colour programme looks wonderful, and sets the psychedelic tone for the evening. But sadly it doesn't credit any of the production crew apart from the co-directors Seb Carrington and Aidan Lazarou, so I cannot thank the musicians by name. But, guys, thank you.
As Carrington readily admits, The Tempest is an extremely tricky play to mount. It tempts punters in with its promises of shipwrecks, magic and monsters, but then almost nothing at all happens in it. Some people wander around an island for the best part of three hours, then they get forgiven for past misdeeds which the audience don't even get to see. (Let me know if I'm wrong, but I think it is the only Shakespeare play that happens in real time, which you might expect to give it a sense of urgency. But what it gains in innovation it loses in narrative drive.)
Carrington's and Lazarou's production reads deeply and intelligently into the text, finding a personal, psychological journey for The Tempest's central character, the staff-wielding wizard Prospero. Often portrayed nowadays as a toxic male Gandalf-with-a-Grudge, or, even more traditionally, a godlike purveyor of heavenly forgiveness, this Prospero, played by Artemis Betts, is first and foremost a woman.
There's nothing particularly revolutionary about a female Prospero. In fact the last time The Tempest was done by Oxford students, Izzy Lever played her as Prospera, and her performance emphasised a maternal gentleness in the character.
Betts finds something more disturbing. This Prospero is an agent of what you might call toxic femininity. She is baleful, wide-eyed, racked with guilt for what her exile has done to her daughter Miranda, as much as desperation to protect and redeem her. This Prospero has spent the last twelve years shutting herself off from love as well as Milan, and it's done her irreparable damage. When she says at the end that, after returning home, she will lock herself up and 'every third thought shall be my grave' , she's not exaggerating.
In fact the emotional high point of this production comes when Ariel (EP Siegel) asks Prospero point blank, 'Do you love me?' There is an agonising pause, followed by a scream of agony from the mage. It gets under your skin. And it makes you realise that, for all the trivial cross-island treks, the real journey in this play is not on the surface but down, deep into the soul of its protagonist.
As Ariel, Siegel provides the perfect counterpoint to Betts' Prospero. Conventionally, Prospero is the lodestone around which Ariel flits, light as a tethered butterfly. But here, Ariel is the grounded one: sensible, patient, waiting for her unstable master to come to her senses. It makes for a commanding performance, and the use of distorted voice amplification gives this most elemental of Shakespearean sprites a real sense of otherworldly menace.
Many of the cast in this show are new not only to Shakespeare, and not only to performing outdoors, but new to acting itself. To start your performance career with an outdoor Tempest is a baptism of a wheel of fire, and they deserve maximum respect. There are some issues with voice projection, which is a polite way of saying some of them aren't loud enough. But there is no shortage of enthusiasm. Annabelle Higgins as Miranda is expressive and clear as a bell. Henry Nurse as Caliban delivers not a monster but a wronged and sympathy-earning slave. And Tom Onslow is simply a joy as the drunk clown Trinculo. Fresh from playing Lysander in last week's Midsummer Night's Dream (which is, let's face it, a practice run for The Tempest in its own right) Onslow is a great audience communicator - and I was glad to see that his comic 'falling asleep on the ground very quickly' routine has come in handy two shows running (as it should because it's very funny).
Gardens are both blessings and curses for theatrical productions. Blessings because they look naturally beautiful and they have ready-made soundtracks of songthrushes and robins. But curses because (before the sun goes down) they can feel vast and lacking in that sense of heightened artificiality which a play often requires to look convincing. You wouldn't expect to see someone in a doublet and hose waiting for the number 5 bus to Blackbird Leys, but you would happily accept them standing next to a cardboard painting of a royal palace. It's the same with gardens. This production takes a while to get full control of its beauteous surroundings, but once it locks on, it doesn't let go.
And maybe that is the secret of The Tempest. It's a display of unnatural artifice (magic, masques and monsters) in a setting of natural beauty. Synthesising those two opposing forces is the task facing both Prospero and a director. When this production finds those moments of unison, it captures the strange music of the island, and truly sings.