Mia Torres
Dr. Ingrid Ranum
ENGL 205 02
9 December 2021
The Tempest: Locked Up
In the final part of the Donmar Warehouse Shakespeare trilogy, the theatre company produced The Tempest with an all-female cast and set in a modern-day women’s prison. The experimental production plays with adapting language, costumes, setting, staging, effects, and casting. Donmar Warehouse combined aspects of the original island setting and the modern prison adaptation to fabricate a new location. For example, to simulate the sound of ocean waves crashing, the production dragged bunches of trash on the concrete court of the performance space. It also turned the prison cots into lifeboats, where the crash survivors wore neon orange life preservers as they made it “ashore.” Furthermore, the play added an introduction, an epilogue, and a new warden character. Moreover, Donmar Warehouse altered several scenes and modernized them to appeal to the contemporary audience successfully. Finally, in an attempt to establish the setting of a fantastical island/prison, it cohesively used simple, everyday objects in combination with spectacular lighting design. This juxtaposed design choice forced the audience to significantly suspend disbelief. It seems that Donmar Warehouse’s objective when staging this play was to demonstrate how power structures can exist in locations separated from society, namely on an island and in prisons. Unfortunately for the Donmar Warehouse, all the pieces in the production’s vision did not completely come together to highlight something particularly revelatory about the text or women’s prisons.
The most significant choice that the director and creative team made was to modify the setting, but whatever message they wanted to get across about women’s prisons was lost. Even with the added introduction, scenes, and epilogue, the characters’ relationship to their setting never feels adequately explained or differentiated, leading to a generally confusing tone. The most perplexing scene is when the warden orders Trinculo and Stephano to stop “playing around,” and the characters drop their personas from The Tempest and behave as regular inmates. (Lloyd). This line unravels the world building up to that point in the play and forces audiences to rethink the characters’ relationship to the setting. The production never clarifies if the prison is on an island, if the prison acts as a metaphorical island, or if Shakespeare’s characters were sent to prison. By failing to draw a clear distinction, audiences are simply confused about the role of Shakespeare’s text in a prison and about who exactly is telling this story. The Tempest clearly illustrates that characters will seek to establish themselves at the top of the social hierarchy when individuals are isolated from society and established power structures are disrupted. This is seen through Trinculo and Stephano’s objective to steal power from Prospero and likewise through Antonio and Sebastian’s goal to kill their king. Though well-informed by the text, the production simply fell short when delivering the emphasis on the theme.
Though one of the primary themes in The Tempest is power structure, this production should have done more to establish distinct character identities in order to connect this theme to the setting. This performance struggled to do so because all the actors played two roles. For example, the character Prospero doubles as a 66-year-old inmate named Hannah. Similarly, the added role of the prison warden only adds to the confusion because the warden is an established figure with jurisdiction over the inmates. But in Shakespeare’s storyline, Prospero is the protagonist and has power over all the other characters. Therefore, it is challenging for audiences to distinguish which character has the most authority. Both may have control but in different ways. Prospero has an unofficial influence over the inmates through her use of magic, and through her command over her stooge Ariel and servant Caliban, but the warden has licensed power. This reading makes sense thematically, as it demonstrates that there are two power structures in prisons, one between inmates and the law and another solely between inmates. However, this reading still does not clarify whether the character Hannah is literally Prospero from Shakespeare’s tale or if she is the actualization of a Prospero-like character who would exist in a prison. If the production had been more explicit about which characters had the most power and about whether the actors were playing inmates putting on a performance of The Tempest or if the inmates were actively living the storyline, then the production could have drawn a more straightforward connection about how separation from society in prison is similar to life on a near-deserted island.
All that being said, the production did make several acting and casting choices that enhanced the text; for example, all the cast members had to be female for the setting to work in a women’s prison. This choice surprisingly does not grandly enlighten anything particular about the text; in fact, it is hardly noticeable despite the text originally having a male-led cast. The performances do not aim to be “masculine,” nor do the performers attempt to make themselves behave like stereotypical men. Instead, the actors perform as women who must be harsh, tough, and gritty because those are necessary qualities to possess in prison. And since there are no men on stage to compare the performers to, the contradistinction between genders is not portrayed. However, the gender swap did significantly affect the role of Prospero by making the character more likable. The actor successfully portrays a parent who loves her child and honestly cares for Ariel and other characters. This sensitive side makes Prospero’s sudden decision to forgive her enemies more believable. This sympathetic side of Prospero may be more perceptible because the character is played by a woman, whereas if it were a man, this behavior would not be expected. On the downside, this choice reduces the effect of the plot twist and dissolves the audience’s catharsis that might result from having a quick turnaround in the final act. Regardless, the choice humanizes Prospero and makes for a well-rounded character arc.
Despite Donmar Warehouse’s inability to fully accomplish what they set out to do, the performance is still thoroughly entertaining and compelling. The production company did extensive work collaborating with women and girls who had experience with the prison and justice systems. Their research informed the production choices about the characters’ behavior. Even if some aspects about fleshing out the characters’ relationship to the setting needed more work, the performance still managed to make a connection between Shakespeare’s text and modern-day women’s prisons. The production did an excellent job of adapting some of the more challenging aspects of the play for modern audiences and made it very exciting visually. The epilogue is incredibly empathetic towards inmates and reminds audiences that people who are isolated from society are still people with stories to tell.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. The First Part of Henry the Fourth. The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, Houghton Mifflin, 1974, pp. 847–881.
Lloyd, Phyllida, director. The Tempest. By William Shakespeare. Donmar Warehouse, Drama Online, 2016, www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/video?docid=do-9781350997011&tocid=d o-9781350997011_6060498384001.