Ashland Theatre Note: The Tempest

Nobody doubts that Shakespeare’s Tempest is full of dynamite verse, some of his best. It is possible to argue that the play is static, in that Prospero the magician knows all and control all. In this summer’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival performance, Derrick Lee Weeden finds a plausible way to sidestep the problem: his Prospero is near exploding with passion, anger, regret, perhaps even lust. You can think, if you worry about that sort of thing—woops, he might just get fed up and blow it all apart.

This is Weeden’s 17^th season at Ashland –more or less the same time frame as Prospero’s exile from Milan. Weeden has grown into the part: he’s worn and weathered, a man who has known betrayal, and has learned simply to survive. Weeden has a somewhat formal elocution-teacher style of speech which doesn’t work for everything, but seems to fill this role well. He’s also got an odd little falsetto trick that he’s learned to use to give just the right comic touch to a role that can use a little comedy, but not too much.

Libby Appel’s production is straightforward, not too tricky. She interpolates a collage of Shakespearean sonneteering which actually works pretty well in its place. She rings in a duchess in lieu of a duke for no more obvious reason than to provide an extra role for a woman (Greta Oglesby)—but it works fine, so no complaints. She gives us a singing Ariel (Nancy Rodriguez) with a posse of singing, dancing, rope-climbing sidekicks—the kind of showmanship that Ashland does well, but which this play, at least, can sustain. Dan Donohue as Caliban shows again that he is an actor of remarkable range—he did a first-class Dvornicheck in Stoppard’s Rough Crossing a few years back, and followed it up with a wonderful Henry V, neither an obvious preparation for Prospero’s savage underling (having a black Prospero lord it over a white Caliban is an invigorating touch).