The Real Review

Photo: Ellie Kurtz

Many great directors, among them Richard Eyre, believe Shakespeare’s The Tempest can be interpreted as ‘a play about colonialism without the least distortion – which is not to deny that it is about other things: fathers, daughters, power and magic’ and theatre itself.

This is perhaps optimistic. The hiccup for a modern audience is that The Tempest read through a colonial lens turns Shakespeare into a racist by anachronistic reduction, in the same way that The Merchant of Venice is anti-Semitic and The Taming of the Shrew is seen as sexist.

When Roy Sargeant last year set the Merchant in fascist Italy he torpedoed the happy comic ending which requires Shylock to be a villain, for after his humiliation how could we celebrate the petty love intrigues amongst a bunch of selfish and vainglorious fascist kids?

By using extensive directorial license Janice Honeyman is more successful in negotiating such pitfalls for the Baxter Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company’s co-production of The Tempest.
For modern audiences it is necessary sometimes to sacrifice the textual integrity of the work for accessibility, for what is lost or contradictory in the narrow confines of such readings is compensated for by the enjoyment and understanding brought in the fresh experience of the play.

At the time of writing the play (around 1610), Shakespeare was probably only referencing reports from the briefest and very first tentative, mostly failed, attempts to establish colonies in the Caribbean. The frequent references to freedom can only be ahistorically read as identifying with the aspirations of colonial subjects. Shakespeare was more concerned with freedom in his own society, with moral and creative freedom, freedom through love and willing servitude.

The colonialist reading makes our response to Prospero complex and more fascinating, for he is now the villain, a cruel, irascible, ignoble conquistador screaming and wielding a sjambok. Providence Divine he believes has given him the island, which he in fact stole from Caliban, now his slave. Antony Sher’s emotional reinterpretation of the role does keep our sympathy and ultimately succeeds with his ‘De Klerk’ moment in which he abrogates power and in the last two lines asks, “As you from crimes would pardon’d be / Let your indulgence set me free.” Something which didn’t exactly happen in the colonies, but did in South Africa.

John Kani delivers a first class performance as a humane if foolish Caliban for whom we feel great compassion, but the post-colonial construal makes his job problematic. So Honeyman cleverly has Prospero address the closing couplet to Caliban, and Caliban the last figure on stage.

But if Caliban represents the aboriginals, it is grossly insulting, despite Kani’s empathic characterisation in chains. The Martinican poet Aimé Césair tried to ‘correct’ this with his play Une Tempete told from Caliban’s perspective. Scholars of course disagree among themselves, but some commentators hold Shakespeare’s Caliban as responsible for justifying the British establishments patronising view of the colonised.

Not only does Prospero describe Caliban as subhuman, but the whole play constructs him as subhuman and irredeemably recidivist lusting after Miranda who by his own admission he wants to rape. A ‘thing of darkness’, a ‘beast’, a ‘monster’, ‘thy vile race’ freed from superstition and witchcraft by Prospero, who has taught him ‘how to name the bigger light, and how the less’. Of course, the first nations had perfectly good languages of their own. Caliban’s rebellion is comic ignorance, pandering after false Gods. Unlike Prospero he has no Mandela moment or Gandhi quality.

The effect is to shift the primary relationship. This Tempest revolves around the dynamic between Ariel and Prospero. In a handsome performance, Atandwa Kani, as the native sprite and politically correct reading of the colonial struggle, takes centre stage and steals the show, abetted by Neo Muyanga’s superb musical compositions.

Visually the production will stun audiences, especially in the UK where it will tour. Extensive use of colourful African fabrics and costumes designed by Illka Louw, giant Bamako-style puppets by Janni Younge and African masks, almost overwhelm the performances. Pantomime can so quickly supplant allegory. Though not illegitimate in our post-modern world, given the colonial reading, there is some irony in this as it is of course unavoidably faux, an appropriation of African culture and ritual objects, decontextualised and limited in function to exotic appeal.

The sheer visual density of the staging means audiences will be rewarded on a second viewing.

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