Although there are textual and character cuts, The Players' version of The Tempest also adds modern magic to the play's "rough magic" with rocking music and spinning lighting. And oh, yes, the hero's a heroine: Prospera (played with full authority by Linda MacCluggage, done up in spun gold right down to her sandals).
Caliban (confident Angel Borths) is a gray-clad, whiny brat, always harping on her rights to the Island through her ex-ruler witch mom, Sycorax . Lilian Moore could not look or act more her opposite as Ariel, a blonde Holly-Go-Lightly-looking messenger in pastoral green.
A cross between the two physically, Jessica Szempruch is a winsome Miranda, whether eliciting from Prospera all the info she (and audiences) must know to follow what's going on and why or wondering at the variety of males the tempest has tossed up. Her innocence is matched by Frankie LaPace's Ferdinand. These really young lovers, unlike those from so many professional Shakespearean companies, offer a refreshing change.
Low-life comic antics are much reduced to Stu Gold's drunken butler, Stephano, cavorting very amusingly with Caliban. Ariel does, though, have some fun sowing discord among Antonio (played darkly by Robert Shuster), Prospera's usurping brother, as well as the regal Steve Horowitz and Dan Higgs, as the King of Naples and his brother.
Everyone gets off pretty lightly, since the bothersome Spirits Shakespeare created never show up. However, the best of the Italians, Gonzalo, does (in the estimable person of Richard LeVene), and Prospera rightly acknowledges his goodness. Lords and sailors make up the sparse but okay supporting cast.
The one guy I missed is Trincolo, but the usual roustabouting of sailors would have interfered with the Stephano-Caliban connection made here.
Cutting the play down by half means so many juicy things, not the least of which are Shakespeare's own songs, go missing. On the other hand, director Jeffery Kin makes the play accessible to a wide public. Without emphasis on pastoral or philosophy, he emphasizes the comedy. Things are crazy mixed-up but straightened out and end happily for the good. Even high-school students should like the sound and light show, and teachers could promote some learning by suggesting to students a comparison of the original text with The Players' version as a summer project.
Kirk Huges' functional scenic design -- which encompasses three raked platforms, sometimes backed by curtain drops, as well as upstage projections -- suggests the spaces of a traditional Shakespearean stage but in a different order and proportion.
What impressed me most was how the actors seemed at ease with the language of the play. MacCluggage, with all her lines, never once faltered or slurred that not-at-all-rough poetry.
