Live, in-person theater performances have returned! And on Saturday, July 17, the Oak Park Festival Theater players took to the stage at their Austin Gardens home, mounting an inventive and engaging production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest - the Equity company’s first post-pandemic production, and among the first live professional stage performances in Chicagoland.
The Oak Park Festival Theater company has a great reputation and this production of The Tempest tells why. Director Barbara Zahora brings something exceedingly fresh to perhaps Shakespeare’s final work: incorporating the affects of supernatural heroes from what is arguably our dominant creative vernacular: the worlds of Star Wars, Marvel and DC Comics.
The trappings of magical realism drawn from those fantasy worlds, with force fields, mind control, telekinetic powers and the like, fit perfectly in The Tempest. It is fundamentally a fantasy play, in which Alonsa (Noelle Klyce), the Queen of Naples, and Antonia (Jeannie Affelder), the usurping Duchess of Milan, are shipwrecked along with their royal entourage on an island inhabited by (a bit of Shakespearean coincidence here) Antonia’s brother Prospero, and Prospero’s daughter Miranda. Antonia had deposed Prospero 12 years before, and set him adrift.
During this time, Prospero apparently honed his skills as a sorcerer, and formed an alliance with two indigenous supernatural forces on the island - the demigod Ariel (Bernell Lassai is captivating) and the monstrous Caliban (you will be spellbound by Matt Gall’s changes in stature). The action of the play revolves around Prospero’s machinations to reclaim his throne, and dispel the internecine squabble that had two brothers at odds over the crown. Noteworthy in their Shakespearean delivery are Austyn Williamson as Ferdinand and Kevin Theis as Prospero.
The Tempest had always seemed to me to be trapped in amber with its 16th century magical conventions reliant on the thin broth of a distant memory of ancient gods and goddesses. This transfer using the tropes of contemporary culture has reset audience members’ expectations. So when the gold-caped Ariel stands on the platform above the stage to suspend the actions of characters, or move them like puppets, accompanied by synthetic sounds familiar from movies and miniseries, it all makes perfect sense.
“Even though we chose this play long before coronavirus and the murder of George Floyd changed our world so significantly, its themes of exile, injustice, the struggle for power, self-discovery and healing are all particularly resonant after the last year,” says Zahora, who is also Artistic Director for the group. “As people start to come out of their homes and find a new normal post-pandemic, we hope this will be particularly meaningful for those seeing it for the first time.”
The Tempest is also laced with lyrics and even dance, for which added music rarely works - but they really do work here. Credits to George Zahora for original music and sound design; original vocal music and musical direction is by Jennifer Harlee Mitchell; movement and dance choreography is by Erica Bittner; and movement, combat and intimacy direction is by Mark Lancaster.
The stage is set under a centuries old live oak tree, and the opening half hour is accompanied by the cacophony of thousands of locusts who eventually fall silent. Actors are miked and the sound is pretty good overall. But it almost doesn’t matter what you hear or understand; it’s what you see that counts in The Tempest.
Performances of The Tempest run through Aug. 21. Show times on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays begin at 8 p.m.; Sunday performances start at 7 p.m. Tickets are on sale at oakparkfestival.com.
