The Caribbean Tempest
The Caribbean Tempest, playing earlier in the evening - is a calm, respectable, short version of Shakespeare's magical late romance that makes real creative use both of the company's Caribbean background and of the garden setting. Here, the anarchic, surreal quality of Gough's imagination runs with the grain of the play instead of breaking its momentum, and there's something joyful and right about the giant cockatoos and fishes, and the curious ostrich, that drift through the lush shrubbery to peer at Prospero and his islanders. There's fine Caribbean music with lyrics brilliantly adapted by Kit Hesketh-Harvey, particularly in a wonderful, fierce rap for Vinta Morgan's impressive Caliban; the issue of race and colonialism in the play flows naturally out of the company's own experience; and if the overall quality of performance is not sharp enough to push the show into the four-star bracket, this is still a delicious way to spend an evening in one of the loveliest gardens on earth.
The Bard with a reggae beat
The Herald
August 17, 1999
Theatre The Caribbean Tempest, Royal Botanical Gardens Mark Fisher
ENTER an ostrich stage right. That's the kind of stage direction you head to see Toby Gough's Theatrum Botanicum outdoor performances for. His talent is for a kind of controlled anarchy, unexpected cultural meetings, and happy irreverence to the classics.
We get a fair amount of that here, in a colonialist vision of Shakespeare's last play which throws the rhythms and sounds of the Caribbean into the Gough mixer. For my money, however, there's rather too much control and not enough of the wild energy coming through.
Further, there's little sign of a purposeful interpretation of the play. It's done clearly and cleanly, but you don't fall in love with Miranda, and you can't work up much interest in Prospero. There's more vigour in Ariel and Caliban, and there's fun to be had in the tumbling of the spirits, and the lilting reggae of the music, but it's not Gough at his exuberant best.