The Tempest at Rochester Community Players

Dread Rattling Thunder! Rochester Community Theater brings the Bard back to live audiences

I joined a mid-week crowd at the Rochester Highland Bowl Theater defying climate change weather patterns and excited to see one of the region’s first outdoor live performances.  The modest crowd was clearly thrilled to be seeing theater in-person again and gave each of the actors a celebrity worthy applause on their entrances. The heart of the vision of this production allows for commercial ardor and artistic ambition to collide and commingle. Dr. Haggerty’s unique blend of Deaf and hearing actors can be impressive and effective, even moving, The artistic concept provides an artistic reason for the two cultures and languages – a double frame on reality with spirits assisting and protecting the human characters of Shakespeare’s creation.

The colorful costumes are creative concoctions from designer Shelly Stam. They are a delight to the eye and certainly help to support the double vision of spirit/human characters. There was a feeling of Neapolitans landing on the island of Where The Wild Things Are. I let go of my expectation of a more traditional Shakespeare production and was immersed in this new post-Covid world. I found myself drawn to the Deaf and signing actors soon forgetting it was their hands speaking and not their voices. Make no mistake, what they say is real Shakespeare, with some reasonable trims and modifications. They speak and sign the language beautifully, finding nuances of humor, feeling and fantasy packed into the prose and poetry of the script. In addition, some delightful surprises await a modern audience in the musical choices recognizable as familiar pop tunes.  The sound design by Dan Roach is exotic and helps bring on an element of fantasy.  Lighting by Jeremy Dominik was often dark causing some of the actors to struggle with being seen as they signed. Set by Joseph Fox provided a location.

Presiding over a motley, talented assembly is Prospero, the former duke of Milan. Played with elegance and fire by Malik C. Paris and a powerful and emotional spirit voice of Peter Haggerty.  Prospero — an aging wizard who is also his author’s last and fondest alter ego — is more than a gimmick. A double father-daughter bond with Miranda (played delicately by Tamara Chapman and her fierce spirit protector Eliza McDaniel) was a multi-layered relationship, complicated and humorous.  We saw the text and subtext unfold showing a parent/child relationship fraught with envy, and protectiveness which blossoms into something newly rich and strange.

The Paris/Haggerty pairing is both regal and vulnerable, and emphasizes the character’s sometimes cruel dignity, his need for affection and also his stubborn loneliness. As Miranda, Chapman/McDaniels is both the sweet, unworldly apple of Prospero’s eye and a younger, softer version of her ardent, intelligent father. In both Sign and spoken English the pairing utters Miranda’s flights of love poetry with marvelous feeling and conviction.  Romantically partnered with Samuel Langshteyn and Tyler Lucero they create a sweet awkward first love depiction.  The Ferdinand pairing brings a wholesomeness and wide open vulnerability to the role that resonates well as the object of Miranda’s devotion.

The rest of the players perform with admirable insight and vigor. After a shipwreck that Prospero has engineered, a boatload of Italian nobles wanders a corner of an island, complaining and conspiring. They include the treacherous and, at times outrageous Sebastienne (Abigail Smith/Nicky Sudyn) and Antonio (Arthur Parsley/Brodie McPherson), the kind and elegant Gonzala (Camille Unadiale/Jillian S. Christensen) and the melancholy King Alonso (Simon Moody’s resonant voice paired with Johnnie Duartes charm), Ferdinand’s father. Elsewhere, Prospero’s servant, Caliban (Troy Chapman/Benjamin Leyer), falls in with Trinculo (Matthew Annis/Lizz deSimone) and Stephano (Jamal Jones/David Broadnax, all hilarious), servants driven by drink and idleness to absurd visions of imperial sovereignty. These Shakespearian clowns took some of the most famous comedy scenes in Shakespeare and drove them to tears-in-your-eyes hysterical level.  Finely physical and cleverly staged every movement and word was a delight.

The spirits of the island clearly lead by Ariel in the form of the gorgeous duo of Dakota Nicole Halliburton and Brianna Hicken were an effervescent delight - both playful and able to depict the emotional connection built with Prospero over twelve years. Lovely movement and strong singing vocals were impressive.  In support were Joshua Howell-Leyer, Andrea Janel Brown, Evan J. Miller and Carl Webster

With its thick, heady themes and endless dramaturgical possibilities, the play presents risks and temptations in equal measure. The conquered island with its, resentful, disinherited native occupant, Caliban, has made it seem, especially in recent decades, like a fable of European colonialism. At the same time, Shakespeare’s blend of romance, comedy and political intrigue and his echoings of Virgil and Ovid can make this, like his other late work, feel at once classical and incipiently postmodern.

These ideas, and others circulate through Dr. Haggerty’s direction, and were able to cohere into a compellingly new rendering of the play, generating glimmers of insight, slivers of feeling and spasms of sensation.  This re-entry into live theater post-covid dazzles and delights.

“The Tempest” is, perhaps above all, the portrait — the self-portrait — of an artist on the verge of saying farewell to his art. By abjuring his “rough magic,” burying his magician’s staff and drowning his book of spells, Prospero elects to live in a world without supernatural possibilities; having demonstrated the power of art, he accepts the limits of that power and forsakes hubris for humility, challenging us all to find “the rarer action in virtue rather than vengeance.”

THE TEMPEST plays in Rochester N.Y. at the Highland Park Bowl Theater July 9-25 8pm, no Mondays or Tuesdays. Free