| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
Theater Reviews |
Summer 2002 |
Tempest in a tossed
salad of humor
Robertson Davies knew how to make us laugh at ourselves. He captured our Canadian psyche in his many books, and he usually did it with a great deal of wit and humor. When he first conceived Tempest-Tost, he did so as a play, although in the end we all got to know it as his first novel. Now Stratford has gone back to Davies' original idea and created a play from the novel. Writer/director Richard Rose took on the job to adapt Tempest-Tost for the stage, and in the process gave us a jolly toss-up that allows us to not just chuckle, but to roar with a satisfied belly-laugh.
As the title suggests, Shakespeare's Tempest is tossed around aplenty. In this case by a Little Theater group in Salterton, 'a small university town that also happens to have a military college (i.e. Kingston, Ontario). It tackles the pretensions and misconceptions in 1950s small-town Canada of what theater ought to be like. But lest we become smug, some of those pretensions and misconceptions still are around, although our amateur theater groups are now far more sophisticated then they were half a century ago.'
The play is full of hilarious characters and situations, too many to mention all. But, we must point out Richard McMillan in the role of Hector Mackilwraith, school teacher extra-ordinaire, who also happens to be treasurer of Salterton Little Theatre, and who inveigles himself into the role of Gonzalo. McMillan stole the show as the middle-aged, pathetically inhibited Mackilwraith with a hopeless crush on young Griselda Webster (Michelle Giroux), although Kate Trotter's performance as the bossy president of the SLT, Nell Forrester, is also a fine achievement of comedic acting.
Lucy Peacock here takes on the role of actor/director Valentine Rich, former Salterton resident, who has been lured back to her hometown from New York by Forrester to direct The Tempest. Peacock gives a fine reading of the only sane individual on stage, who attempts to bring some order to the chaos that is created by the various self-interests, vanities and political maneuvers that are part of the amateur company.
Charlotte Dean's costumes nicely capture the period, but to director Rose must go the kudos for having achieved not only a credible adaptation of the novel for the stage, but for managing to create the humorous mayhem without letting it run away into slapstick chaos.
Tempest-Tost runs to September 30, 2001 at the Tom Patterson Theatre.
Copyright © 2002-8 CamKohl Arts Productions