The Tempest at the Steppenwolf: A Review

Now playing at the Steppenwolf Theatre, The Tempest is a wildly imaginative re-telling of what is generally considered to be William Shakespeare’s final work.



Opening with a deafening crack of thunder that startles the audience into attentiveness, the entire theater is transformed into a hellish maelstrom as one watches the crew of a ship try to weather an unholy storm caused by the play’s protagonist, Prospero (played by Frank Galati), with the help of the Ariel (Jon Michael Hill) and his fellow Spirits (played by Miles Fletcher, Eric James Casady, and Emma Rosenthal).  With images of a tumultuous ocean projected onto a backdrop, the actors fall over each other and even dangle from the ceiling over the heads of the audience as they battle an imaginary storm.

To achieve the above and many other dynamic scenes, the Artistic Director of The Tempest took a largely minimalist stance towards set design; successfully utilizing the theory that less is more. (Generally a bare stage, the set itself seemingly transforms automatically depending on what is needed for a scene; even this is little more than rods and sheets around a large central ramp.) Many of the major “visual” scenes would center around a single, large point of focus, (a really tall Spirit in a long, white dress; Ariel dressed in something resembling a metal hoop-skirt and flapping menacing looking wings) with a smattering of smaller set pieces set around the large one with the rest left up to the imagination of the audience.

Portraying a play in this fashion will not always work, but in the case of The Tempest, it is possibly the only way it can work without going overboard on set design which, ultimately, would bog down the performance and do injustice to the vivid imagery inherent in the Bard’s original work.



This leads to one of the play’s few downfalls, because while the Steppenwolf took many creative liberties with their portrayal of The Tempest, (Ariel breaks out into a rap at one point) they kept the language largely intact from the original work. Applause is certainly deserved for their decision to not “modernize” the great majority of the language from Shakespeare’s original work, but not every actor can convincingly pull off the English of that time. Unfortunately, not every actor was able to fluidly speak the Olde English prose, and at times they sounded stilted and awkward speaking their lines. It’s not the fault of the actors, really; the material is extremely difficult to perform, even for some of the most seasoned actors.



But when the actors were able to conquer the “language barrier” of Shakespeare’s work, characters and their story would resonate as though they actually felt the (let’s face it) poetry they were performing. A perfect example of this is Prospero’s final soliloquy, as he speaks directly to the audience, asking them to learn something from this adventure, and see themselves in him.



Being the first work of Shakespeare’s that the Steppenwolf has ever performed, it could have been challenging to portray this story with a balance of the original material and modern sensibilities. Overall, they pulled off a visually stunning performance of The Tempest that enthralls as well as makes one think.

The Tempest is playing now through May 31, 2009. The Steppenwolf Theatre is located at 1650 N Halsted St in Chicago, Il. For tickets or more information on The Tempest or any upcoming shows, please call the box office at (312) 335-1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.