Theater Review—

 Town Players Do Well With One Of Shakespeare’s ‘Problem’ Plays

By Julie Stern

The last of Shakespeare’s 36 plays, The Tempest is one of the group known as the “problem” plays. Not a tragedy, not a history, it stretches the bounds of genre.

Even as it wears the trappings of earlier comedies — set in a mysterious deserted place, in the way of As You Like It or Midsummer Night’s Dream — or dealing with the need to remove an ursurper and restore a rightful duke to his throne, the problem plays struggle with moral dilemmas and psychological conflicts. The Town Players of Newtown have taken on this work, and the result is an impressive offering for director Ruth Ann Baumgartner and the actors she has selected for the stage.

Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, has lived on a deserted island ever since his wicked brother Antonio arranged to have him banished and take his place. By temperament a scholarly intellectual, Prospero uses his imprisonment to study the black arts and become a master of magic. He lives there with his young daughter Miranda, attended by two slaves — the spirit Ariel, and the deformed savage Caliban.

After some twelve years on the island, Prospero uses his magic skills to wreak revenge, by creating a tempest so great that it wrecks the ship carrying Antonio, as well as Alonso, the King of Naples, Alonso’s son Ferdinand, and brother Sebastian, and various other councilors and servants. Further, he manipulates things so that the survivors are separated, each thinking the other dead.

Miranda sees Ferdinand — the first human other than her father she has ever known — and falls in love with him. Sweet young Ferdinand reciprocates. All should go well except…

Prospero has to choose between remaining on the dark side, or giving up his magical powers and returning to a conventional life in Milan. How important is revenge? How important is power, and what kind of power is actually corruption?

Both Ariel and Caliban beg their master for their freedom, and he promises it to them if they help him torment the stranded passengers. But Prospero, too, needs his freedom- freedom from the madness that obsesses him. And the play ends on the unanswered question of whether life in the real world will prove satisfying to people who have spent their lives alone on an island.

Under director Ruth Ann Baumgartner’s practiced hand, the play opens with a wonderful scene of a ship in great danger in the night. Seen in silhouette, the actors loom large on a darkened stage, lit only by flashing lanterns, to the sounds of crashing waves and panicked shouts, Paul Doniger is remote and tormented as the vengeful Prospero. Elise Bochinski and Miles Everett are theatrically convincing as Ariel and Caliban.

Nicholas Moreno and Olivia Carr are sweet as the young lovers. Christopher Bird and Edmound Fitzpatrick are properly vicious as the conniving villains, Antonio and Sebastian (Alonso’s brother, who has hopes of doing to him what Antonio did to Prospero), Rob Pawlikowski has a great time in the role of Stephano, the drunken butler, who gets to sing and clown at the expense of Edward Cahill’s Triniculo the jester.

It’s an ambitious project, and director Baumgartner should be commended for her dedicated mission to raise the cultural level of both the town, and the Little Theater.

(Performances continue two more weekends, until July 26, at The Little Theatre, Orchard Hill Road. Curtain is 8 pm on Friday and Saturday, and 2 pm Sunday.

Tickets are $18 for the evening shows and $15 for the matinee. Call 270-9144 for reservations and additional information.)