The Tempest at the Dallas Theater Center

This Tempest is still very much in the mode of Kevin Moriarty’s easy-access, short-attention-span Shakespeare. It’s an approach — seen previously in Midsummer Night’s Dream and Henry IV — that frankly, I’ve not been bowled over by.  Of course, as with the dance-party Midsummer two years ago, this approach can provide an invigorating and popular introduction to a play. And certainly, there’s often a case to be made for simplifying and re-wording Shakespeare’s works. When it’s done on this scale and this regularly, though, it seems like a lack of faith in the plays or in the actors. It’s as if even the great ones can’t succeed without some serious re-tailoring.

With The Tempest, Moriarty has cut down Shakespeare’s late comedy to an hour and 45 minutes — without intermission. He’s stripped out much of the historical context and classical references, dropped the masque (which many directors do) and modernized the language throughout.

Paradoxically, Moriarty’s overall approach can be jokey-trendy  — given the chance, the drunken clowns Stefano and Trinculo eagerly sport hoodies and Juicy Couture. Yet his production is also retro, even traditionalist. In addition to the cuts just mentioned, the DTC Tempest forgoes any of the colonialist overlay that’s become conventional in recent years — with Prospero as the Western master of science and power, and Caliban as an oppressed Third-World native. (Coincidentally, Adrian Hall’s production at the Theater Center — the last Tempest done by the company — brought this interpretation to Dallas in 1987. Most elaborately perhaps, director George C. Wolfe brought it to Broadway in 1995 in a Jamaican-island version featuring Patrick Stewart as Prospero).

Yet here, Moriarty’s simplifications work wonderfully well. That’s because what he’s given us is The Tempest as pure fairy tale. Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, was banished to an island where he’s raised his daughter Miranda. For twelve years, he’s used magic and the island’s magical creatures to prepare his revenge against his usurping brother, Antonio.


It’s a fairy tale, but Moriarty gives it a contemporary gloss. Instead of a shipwreck, the play opens with a lame airplane crash (onboard, there’s not much in the way of smoke, warning lights or even passenger panic). But our castaways then find themselves on set designer Beowulf Borrit’s silvery dreamscape, which recalls Arthur Rackham’s children’s book illustrations or the fantasy worlds of album-cover artist Roger Dean. This is a desert island where it snows, an island where even Caliban, the island’s monster, is amazed by the music he hears and the dreams they cause.


Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Ariel, Cliff Miller as Trinculo, Joe Nemmers as Caliban and Lee Trull as Stephano in The Tempest

This fairy tale succeeds not because of Borrit’s beautiful set or the music (provided by Broken Chord) or even the special effects (some of which, like the plane crash, the flying harpy and a magic dog, aren’t that impressive). It’s plain Moriarty wants to remove a lot of the antiquated language to get to these characters’ human essence, and several performers succeed. They make this a heartfelt Tempest as well as a lovely one.

Longtime Dallas actor Joe Nemmers makes Caliban a tender monster, not the usual “thing most brutish,” to quote Miranda. To be sure, Nemmers snarls and threatens and contorts his muscular body into an Igor-like crouch (one half-expects him to lisp, “Master!“). But his Caliban is more akin to a resentful teenager, hating to obey, hating his chores, yet secretly aching for adult attention and guidance. There’s a wounded soul in this beast. In fact, at the end, when Prospero acknowledges “this thing of darkness” as his own, the reconciliation is more touching than the entire Miranda-Ferdinand courtship, which in the hands of Abbey Siegworth and Steven Walters feels formulaic. The clowns (Lee Trull and Cliff Miller) are much the same — good but not great.

The island’s other magical servant-creature, Ariel, is given a more human interpretation as well. He’s not as ethereal-extraterrestrial as some Ariels, but he ends up relatively unsurprising as a kind of choirboy Puck. Hunter Ryan Herdlicka is a handsome, agile presence with a clear, pure voice but he’s also somewhat bland in the role, the likable puppy to Nemmers’ attack dog.

It’s Chamblee Ferguson’s Prospero that ultimately makes this Tempest beat with a big heart. Ferguson doesn’t have a duke’s commanding presence, the kind classic tragedians like Patrick Stewart, Michael Hordern or Christopher Plummer bring to the role with apparent ease. At first, Ferguson seems to be trying to make up for that lack by bellowing too much. But in his last great speeches, he truly comes into his own, bringing to bear an emotional openness not often seen in the old wizard. For his powerful ‘farewell to magic’ speech, lighting designer Clifton Taylor has pulled out a few effects that complement the verbal fireworks.

It’s among those speeches that Ferguson finds The Tempest’s emotional core — in a few lines that are often overlooked: Prospero’s rejection of revenge. Too many actors make Prospero’s choice seem pre-ordained: We all knew the old sorcerer was too nice a fellow to do any serious damage. In a smart move — Ferguson’s or Moriarty’s — this Prospero diligently sharpens the knife he intends to use on Antonio (the smoothly sly J. Brent Alford). Ariel brings him the news that all is ready for his revenge. But he adds, almost as an afterthought, if Prospero saw how wretched his brother and his entourage are now, he might feel differently.