Lads On The Island

Nicola is back on ushering duty at Circa again, and this month there’s an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Sounds fun!

Due to various time constraints, we’d had a big lunch at Arcimboldi – pizza and pasta – rather than trying to find somewhere to eat before afterwards, as the show started at 7:30 and lasted 75 minutes. Now that Field & Green have closed we have fewer good options for dining nearby. No matter, we satisfied ourselves with what was described as “bread and dips” off the snack menu, but actually turned out to be “bread and dip”. It was OK.

I’ve never seen or read The Tempest before, so I did a quick bit of swotting (Wikipedia) to get the gist of it. I needn’t have bothered: it’s not so much an adaptation, as a play loosely based on characters from the Tempest. There are three actors – the eponymous “lads”, Prospero and Ariel; and four female characters all played by Bronwyn Ensor: Prospero’s sister Miranda; Ariel’s boyfriend Sebastian; Prospero’s ex-girlfriend, Fern; and Ariel’s mother. Sycorax.

Shakespeare afficionados will have spotted that Miranda isn’t Prospero’s sister, and Fern doesn’t exist in the original. She is, however, the driving force of the plot, as it is Prospero’s breakup with her that is the cause of his angst. Prospero has magically bound his best friend Ariel to the island, and Ariel is trying to comfort him in the time-honoured way of all men, with beer, chips, and an acoustic guitar. Whilst the plot in no way follows Shakespeare, quotes from the play are liberally worked into the dialogue, in particular echoing the “thou liest” from the play with “I truthest”, repeated several times at different points. They also debate the relative merits of being Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Watson. It is the arrival of Ariel’s mother that finally opens Prospero up, and he discusses the details of his breakup with Ariel and Sycorax.

It all comes to a satisfactorily unsatisfactory conclusion, rather than wrapping up neatly. There are few twists and turns along the way as well – spoiler alert!* It turns out Ariel was never bound to the island, and that Prospero had been unceremoniously dumped by Fern, rather than the way he told it.

 

* It’s OK, it’s finished its run in Wellington, and you probably won’t get to see it overseas.