A terrific Tempest

The Bard in the big top

by Bill Rodriguez

The Bard would have been amused. After all, Prospero's Magic Island, or A Tempest In a Big Top is a rollicking whirlwind of activity, with a magician, two clownish buffoons and even an "Ariel" act. Sure. Shakespeare would have joined the applause for this Pan-Twilight Circus version of The Tempest.

Gaudily decorated, the skeleton of the comedy is still here. The sorcerer Prospero (Algernon D'Ammassa) is shipwrecked with his daughter Miranda (Anne Gardiner) and their twisted wretch of a slave, Calaban (Adam G. Gertsacov). Another wreck brings them a good prospect for Miranda's hand, Ferdinand (Tom Sgouros), son of the King of Milan. Under Bob Colonna's clever direction, the story is entertainingly reduced to its essentials. Girl meets boy (with wide eyes: she has never seen a male besides her father and the deformed Calaban), girl loses boy (Daddy pulls the Fantasticks trick of pretending opposition so as to fan their mutual interest) and girl finally gets boy again.

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This Prospero is gentler than most you'll find, amiably portrayed by D'Ammassa as a bemused observed of goings-on. (When Miranda asks him how they survived the recent storm, he says, "By Providence divine," pauses, and shakes his head, resisting making some lame wordplay.) This fractured fairy tale is not much longer than 90 minutes, including intermission. The "forsooths" and "verilie"s are reduced to a minimum so we get plenty of what we came for: circus stuff. We get it in little ways, such as Sgouros's firewood- dropping shtick, and in bigger ways, such as a "Spanish Web" routine and an impressive chair-balancing act.

On several occasions, the circus performances emerge from the story itself. The most natural opportunity is with Ariel, the fairy servant that Prospero rescued from imprisonment in a tree. Three performers play the sprite: Ivy Brunelle as the voice, Chelsea Bacon doing some intricate stationary trapeze work and Jennifer Richman-Cohen on a spinning rope. Since Trinculo is a court jester in the play, that was a natural, with Nick Goldsmith juggling balls at blazing speed.

The star of the show is Stephano, the drunken butler, when Jens Larson does his remarkable balancing act. After tottering atop a tower of chairs, it all culminates in his dramatic back-arched handstand way up on a stack of blocks; then he knocks them away and comes to rest on his hands again. Calaban is an eight-foot inhabited puppet designed by Marc Kohler (with the puppeteer's head as a hump, Big Nazo-style). When he meets up with Stephano and Trinculo, they conspire against Prospero. But because their encounter is done as a dumb show, the two aren't very well integrated with Calaban. Shakespeare had him think they were gods, but there's none of that trembling awe here. And, surprisingly, gone too is drunken Stephano taking Calaban and Trinculo, hiding from the rain under a cloth, to be a four-legged, two-voiced monster, which could easily have been done without words.

There's no big Barnum & Bailey brass band, but we get something better. A five-piece band headed by Steven L. Jobe never resorts to the usual oom-pah music. Mideastern sounds, a musical saw and a hurdy-gurdy are more the engaging norm in the several festive or haunting tunes he wrote for the show.

Yes. I think Shakespeare would have taken his nieces and nephews to this big-top Tempest. He might even echo his line for Miranda: "Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures there are here!"

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