The Toronto Theatre Review: Theatre Rusticle’s The Tempest

By Ross

They float out, five long-skirted wizard women, ready to revolve and run the course of one of Shakespeare’s greatest works, The Tempest. Listing off the litany of parts these five women will play, they engage and create, with assistance, the rumbling and thunderous storm that soon envelopes the space, cracking open the bard’s final fantastical play into solid reformed bits of wonder and magic. It starts and stops with a command, so much like the central character, Prospero, played by all at one point or another, caped and holding a wand to elicit power over the winds and the rain of this captivating Tempest. But the rush of the stomping storm soon lifts, and we find ourselves dynamically washed ashore and right into the embrace of this physical act of poetry and passion, thanks to the determined grace and ingenuity of Theatre Rusticle.

Unearthing and expanding The Tempest‘s most intricate of plots, this rich-language story is delivered with a clever tongue and an act of pure magic for the duration. Theatre Rusticle takes this story, overflowing with themes that circle around the act and art of freedom, love, colonization, and power, all in service to the pathways to truth. Told by five well-versed performers; Brefny Caribou, Jill Goranson, Beck Lloyd, Trinity Lloyd, and Annie Turna; the energetic cast embraces and plays to differing levels of success all of the fifteen-plus characters, passing them from one to another like a relay swim team who wants a chance to do battle with each and every stroke. It’s a wonderment in its wildness, as we sit back and watch Theatre Rusticle collide head-on with “all aspects of the “Shakespearean myth, magic, harsh history, and all the ways we make theatre“.

As formed and directed with stealth by Allyson McMackon (Brooke Johnson’s Trudeau Stories), the play flies forward with determination, running in circles around the complex characters and plot. Each of the five actors plays all sorts of complicated and intertwined characters, gesturing towards us all with small but inventive costumed qualities, like a chain around the waist of the play’s antagonist, Prospero’s slave, Caliban. It’s sometimes difficult to follow, who is who, although they do a fantastic job, pulling us along and making us aware of who’s who during each moment, with some thanks to the strong work by Linsay Anne Black (hat design), Monica Viani (Milliner), Brandon Dleiman (Costumes), and Madeline Ius (Assistant to Kleiman). Yet, it leaves the characters sometimes lacking a unified quality, which might be the point. Or the cost.

The Tempest is considered by most one of Shakespeare’s superb triumphs, exploring complicated themes like colonization and the nature of humanity, and with these five playing all the parts, the words become our guide. They all handle the text with a determined ease, delivering the rich language with aplomb, while taking us through the gallop with careful consideration of the relevant contemporary issues that are at the heart of the piece, thanks to the supple lighting design work of Michelle Ramsay (Factory’s The Waltz). There’s never a dull moment in its almost three-hour running time, which is pretty impressive in its own right as the five find flavor in their detailed responses and asides.

It is interesting to note, especially as we watch the five women line up before us, that Shakespeare only wrote one female character woman in The Tempest, and that character is the young daughter of Prospero, Miranda, whose virginity and naivete play a strong center in this circle of light supplied. They grab hold and filter it through a unique perspective, all in the face of a male-authored and dominated text that seems to exclude women from its wanderings. The spirit Ariel, a character that is seemingly genderless in theme and contemplation, is delivered here by numerous sailing hats speaking in unison and putting forth a very compelling perspective, finding their light and eventual freedom on that well-cared-for wide stage.

It plays with our senses, and how we devour the text that is so dutifully and diligently delivered here, with passion and a sense of true purpose. However, the main themes of The Tempest revolve around forgiveness and reconciliation, alongside the relinquishing of revenge, which is the play’s and this production’s strength, yet there still is a framework that draws it into controversy.

For good or ill, the framework of colonizing and the colonized still seeps out as we unpack the part of Prospero and Caliban, who together, form two wild extremes; a controversy that isn’t really unpacked here. Caliban’s anger and representation spin off into the dark corners of the space as the play wraps itself up neatly with the five lined up once again. The unpacking of this play does convey the miseries of colonial oppression well in its circular unwinding, but we are not given the chance to understand the formulation, nor the play’s moral stance regarding the antithetical characters’ entwinement and treatment. That framework isn’t unraveled here. Maybe because the interchanging of roles throughout makes it difficult to draw out, or that the focus of this production wasn’t to shine a light on that part or that theme. Both are completely acceptable stances to take as we watch these five grab hold of a few other rings to run relay with.

“I pray thee, mark me,” as the story ever-so-wonderfully unfolds from one line-up to the last. There is some solid play, thought, and humor at the heart of this captivatingly engaging Tempest, delivered well by this crew on the wonderful expansive stage at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, Toronto by Theatre Rusticle. This play, once considered Shakespeare’s most serene and most lyrical, shines its way through the dark, finding a compelling new dimension to a text that is astonishingly relevant and wonderfully revealing.