The Tempest
Ringplay on Aug 05 2009 at 2:38 am | Filed under: General Theatre, Productions
In 2001, the inaugural Ringplay production was the Bahamian Macbeth. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s original play for a Bahamian setting and audience, it had been created originally during the 1970s by the late Rosanna Seaborn (aka Todd), and in 2000, the newly-formed Ringplay Productions modernized it for the 21st century. In it, Macbeth was transformed into an ambitious politician who kills his Prime Minister to achieve his dream. In the first production of Ringplay’s Macbeth, the witches were talk show hosts who controlled the play literally from above; Malcolm was the Deputy Prime Minister, and help was sought from Washington (in the second they were obeah practitioners). The adaptation sacrificed some things — like the full significance of the Elizabethan cosmology — but it gained others.
Image from Zecora Ura's 2006 adaptation of The Tempest
This year, Ringplay is working on a similar adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Widely understood to be Shakespeare’s swan song, the original play tells the story of Prospero, the scholar-magician who loses his dukedom to his more ambitious brother, and who, after being exiled from his home, winds up on an island whose chief inhabitants are a legion of spirits, and Caliban, one creature who takes some kind of human form. Prospero settles on the island with his daughter Miranda, and he raises her, and tries to tame the wild being he meets there. The Tempest of the title refers to the magical hurricane Prospero conjures up to shipwreck his brother and the king who had assisted the overthrow, and the play unfolds under Prospero’s power.
In Shakespeare’s original, Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, his brother Antonio is the usurper, and Alonso is the medieval King of Naples, Antonio’s ally and backer. In the Ringplay adaptation, the kingdoms are twenty-first century hotel conglomerates; Alonso is a woman, and the stakes are the control of Prosperity Cay, an island in The Bahamas where the two great companies, Naples-America and Hotel Milan, hope perhaps to build their next great joint resort. The sea they are crossing is the Bahamian branch of the Atlantic, the spirits are local deities, and Ariel the head spirit takes on forms that include a chickcharney.
The Tempest is a play that’s full of illusion and spectacle. Nothing in the play is as it appears to be. Caliban is written as an uncultured brute, but he has the most beautiful language in the entire play; Ariel, on the other hand, is reduced to singing some of the silliest songs ever penned for the stage. Prospero forces his enemies to feel loss and remorse, and in the end forgives them; he creates the best circumstances he can for his daughter to fall in love, and then forbids her to exercise her feelings; and in the end he sets all the spirits free, renounces his art, and turns away from his island to take up the reins of industry once again.
The Tempest goes into rehearsal on August 10th, and will be performed for school audiences and for the general public during Shakespeare in Paradise between 5th and 12th October 2009. Make plans now to see it — the thing about plays is that once they close, there’s no guarantee they’ll be mounted again!
