Off-Off-Broadway Theater Review: TEMPEST (La MaMa)

The Tempest offers a kaleidoscope of intrigue, betrayals, political shenanigans, murderous intent, monsters, masques, mayhem, magic, and romance. Julie Taymor’s disappointing 2010 big-screen, big-budget version proved that head-spinning CGI-candy is not enough to make all of these ingredients satisfying. Working with a stripped-down stage at La MaMa, director Karin Coonrod puts her stamp on Shakespeare’s second-shortest play (after The Comedy of Errors) in ways that are both laudable and occasionally baffling. While her production oddly softens some of the play’s harsher edges, it is delightful in many other ways. Coonrod begins with nontraditional casting. The Milanese nobles—Prospero, Miranda, and the perfidious Antonio—are played by black actors; both Trinculo, the king’s jester, and Gonzalo, trusted adviser to King Alonso of Naples, are performed by females in male drag; and the beast-man Caliban, the only other human inhabitant of the island who is “not honour’d with a human shape” is played by a very fit and handsome man.