The Tempest
1982: Herb Roland

This is a filmed version of the 1982 production at the Canadian Stratford Festival, and it has many of the advantages and disadvantages of a staged production. While the synergy of characters and audience are objectively observed by the camera (which occasionally is turned explicitly on the audience), one cannot properly engage in it from this side of the screen. Accordingly it alienates the viewer about as much as it pulls him or her into the interaction.

The production is, however, fairly complete, and the roles are all played competently, though with a stage-actor’s sense of space and diction. Things that might have been rendered reflective on screen with overdubbed monologues or the like (thus closing some of the gap left by the failure of intimacy implicit in film) cannot be so handled. For all that, Len Cariou, a veteran character actor on American television and on stage, turns in a solid performance as Prospero, though it seldom achieves the brilliance of some others. Prospero’s “Our revels now are ended” speech is delivered as if in extremity of anguish, and the effect is rather peculiar. Miranda is transparently charming and supremely naive; Caliban (covered with all manner of bumps and knobs) is definitely in command of the role, and plays it with an athletic gusto, doing somersaults, and delivering lines in a crouch or on all fours. Ariel is athletic and even more oddly attired with glittery bits that probably looked better on stage than they do on film; he plays the role overtly for its comic value, and some of the best moments in the play are in his interaction with Prospero. As a character on its own, the audience is lively, and shows an appreciation of the various comical bits of the dialogue. Some audiences may find the thoroughly North American diction a little odd, but ultimately that issue falls away. The production is played more or less without sets and with a minimum of props, as one might expect in such a situation, but it does make good use of occasional props for stunning effects. A handful of production-number set pieces are worth particular note — especially Juno’s appearance at the nuptials Miranda and Ferdinand seems modeled on Mozart’s Queen of the Night. Some may also be amused to see that Loreena McKennitt, more popular in the musical world than in drama, sings the part of Iris.

This production has been made available on DVD as part of one of the CBC “Shakespeare Collection” or “Stratford Collection” boxed sets; it is only intermittently in print, however, and is fairly hard to secure. One might try a library. The technical aspects of the production can only be called poor: the colors are washed out; the image is blurry; at least in my copy (and I presume others) there is a band of static down the right side of the picture, suggesting a quick and mechanical transfer from videotape without any post-transfer cleanup. Nevertheless, it’s worth seeing if one wants a fairly straightforward, orthodox presentation of the play with occasional bursts of remarkable beauty.

2 hrs., 16 min.

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