The Tempest

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on."

This was the AUSA's Summer Shakespeare production, relocated from its usual spot (behind the university Clocktower) to the Pop-Up Globe.

The scenery and staging was - um - interesting, to say the least. The set consisted of a pile of plastic chairs; I never did quite work what they were intended to represent.

One thing I really, really liked was how Ariel was played by three separate actors, which neatly captured the changeability, and the here-and-there-ness, of this character.

Prospero was played by Lisa Harrow. I have no idea who played the other characters (though several faces were familiar from previous AUSA productions), because the Globe management is still not sufficiently organised to provide programmes ;) Though they have managed to procure the usher's T-Shirts, which are rather neat:

front

back

 We had seats yesterday, in the lower gallery:

View from the lower gallery

Some members of the audience (in one of the Lords' Boxes) really got into the spirit of things:

And now, because no words of mine can do sufficient justice to the wackiness of this production, some more photos:

Ariel 

"Hast thou, spirit,/Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?"

Caliban: "This island's mine by Sycorax my mother,/Which thou tak'st from me."

"Hag-seed, hence!"

Wider view of the stage. The pig-headed people, who for the most part just sat around watching the action, were quite creepy - vaguely reminiscent of Lord of the Flies.

"What have we here?" Trinculo does his Jack Sparrow imitation.

Stephano looks on bemused. "What's the matter? Have we devils here?"

Enter Ferdinand bearing a log. Though there is nothing in this stage direction stipulating that Ferdinand should be shirtless, the actors at the Pop-Up Globe seem to be doing quite a few shirtless scenes!

The goddesses Iris, Ceres and Juno bless the betrothed Ferdinand and Miranda (whose courtship takes exceedingly literally the love-at-first-sight trope! Romeo and Juliet are usually held up as the prime example of an o'er hasty marriage but these two are just as bad...)

The wedding masque (frankly surreal)

"... this rough magic/I here abjure..."

"... I'll break my staff,/Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,/And deeper than ever did plummet sound/I'll drown my book."

"Why, that's my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee,/But yet thou shalt have freedom."

"...this thing of darkness I/Acknowledge mine."

One last confusing fling in the final scene - "more matter for a May morning!"