THE TEMPEST

Tempest-tost salad

By JENNA SCHERER

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Of all Shakespeare's plays, few are more fun to produce than his dream stories. I'm thinking A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest here specifically; you know, the ones where a couple of wacky mortals stray into the wilderness and get caught up in the machinations of sprites and monsters, and their brains go all hooey.This kind of setting affords actors, directors and designers alike the chance to have as much fun as they dare.

And Actors' Shakespeare Project, as per usual, dares.

Patrick Swanson's take on The Tempest is as funny as it is strange, as self-aware as it is sincere. For this production, designer David R. Gammons tricks out the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center as an old-timey music hall. Prospero (Alvin Epstein) is an old tux-and-tales magician whose bag of tricks is running low. His island is a wooden catwalk framed by light bulbs and riddled with trapdoors. Ariel (Marianna Bassham) is here less an airy spirit than a winking, grinning, jaded magician's assistant.

The Tempest was Shakespeare's last play, and as such comes loaded with metatheatrical references that make a production like this all the more viable. Prospero is the ousted Duke of Milan, now living on a remote island with his daughter, Miranda (Mara Sidmore). He commands a host of spirits and magicks, and keeps a vengeance-bound monster called Caliban (Benjamin Evett) under lock and key.

He seizes the opportunity to raise a tempest that will wash up a boatful of old friends and enemies on his shore. Like Lost—but way, way better—much messing with the out-of-towners ensues.

Shakespeare went all-out with his swan song, and so does Swanson with its rendering. The director here assembles a veritable who's who of Boston theater heavyweights and next-big-things, many of whom have worked with ASP before.

The scene-stealers of the hour are Robert Walsh and John Kuntz as Stephano and Trinculo, The Tempest's two clowns. They squeeze every drop of comedy out of their slapstick scenes with Caliban, played with writhing anguish by ASP Artistic Director Evett. Bassham has a whale of a time playing Ariel, and Sidmore infuses the victimized Miranda with a cracking wit.

Of course, the real noise here is the venerable Epstein as Prospero. The 83-year-old actor was, among many other things, in the first American production of Waiting for Godot and won the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award last year. His Prospero, like Shakespeare, speaks from a perspective of one who has spent a long life in the theater. His "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" is soft and weary, but undeniably powerful.

The sound and lighting design bring the spook to Prospero's haunted island. Light shines from beneath trapdoors and behind translucent curtains to remind us that we're never alone. A bona fide sound effects pirate (yes, the Arrr! kind) hangs out in the corner playing a lute here, a wine glass there. He's also got a giant, bizarre string instrument that I assumed was some sort of medieval torture device until he took a bow to it.

The Tempest's final act lags a bit, as both Shakespeare and Prospero are putting off renouncing their art. Act IV's pageant, in which the Duke calls up his all-singing, all-dancing troupe of spirits, plays like the Sunday night show at a cash-strapped drag club. Not that that's a bad thing. When else do you get to see a bunch of "serious" actors mince about wearing clown noses and dancing with bendy swords?

If there's anything lacking about Swanson's production, it's that it fails to explore the darker side of The Tempest. Sure, it's a comedy, but it's one about a power-hungry sorcerer manipulating his loved ones. Yet a show can't be all things, and Swanson's got enough up his sleeve to keep us pretty much enthralled.

THE TEMPEST

THROUGH 4.13.08

ACTORS' SHAKESPEARE PROJECT AT THE CAMBRIDGE MULTICULTURAL ARTS CENTER

41 SECOND ST., CAMBRIDGE

866.811.4111

THU-FRI 7:30PM; SAT 2PM, 7:30PM; SUN 2PM

$30-$42

ACTORSSHAKESPEAREPROJECT.ORG