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Review: Freefall Theatre's 'The Tempest: Esta isla es mia' an ambitious adaptation

 
Eric Davis wrote and stars in Freefall Theatre’s “The Tempest: Esta Isla Es Mia,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” [Photo by ALLISON DAVIS]
Eric Davis wrote and stars in Freefall Theatre’s “The Tempest: Esta Isla Es Mia,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” [Photo by ALLISON DAVIS]
Published May 26, 2015

ST. PETERSBURG — Eric Davis has been studying his post-colonial literature, and the result is The Tempest: Esta Isla Es Mia, a one-man show at Freefall Theatre in which he adapts The Tempest and makes the connection between Shakespeare's enchanted island and Cuba.

Mixing and matching Shakespeare and his own writing (with a dash of Cuban patriot Jose Martí added for good measure), Davis, Freefall's artistic director, portrays not just Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, Caliban and the rest of the play's characters but also gives a parallel performance featuring an exiled Cuban theater professor named Yuri marooned on a Florida Key, the Old Man and his daughter, a slave and some Santeria spirits.

In this reading, Cuba's history of struggle for freedom from Spain and the heavy hand of the United States is mirrored by the relationship of the magician-ruler Prospero and his "savage and deformed slave" Caliban.

Davis has conceived a brilliant, provocative tour de force that shouldn't be missed by lovers of Shakespeare, as well as anyone interested in the history of Cuba.

In some ways, though, it is infuriating because it is presented in something of a theatrical vacuum. The ideal audience for Davis' adaptation would be familiar with The Tempest, and there hasn't been a homegrown professional production of it in the Tampa Bay area since an American Stage park show more than 25 years ago.

Davis and Freefall have a tremendous Shakespearean track record that includes worthy, offbeat stagings of A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Comedy of Errors and Romeo and Juliet.

Why not simply do a full production of The Tempest that makes the same point Davis makes in his one-man show? He is plenty capable of devising a fresh interpretation informed by the ideas of a long list of Latin American and Caribbean intellectuals who, as Yuri says in his opening scene, have argued that "the story of this imagined island of Shakespeare's was in one way or another the story of our islands." In a perfect world, Shakespeare's fantasy would run in tandem with Davis' solo show, and each performance would complement the other.

Well, you take what you can get from a talented artist.

Bearded, holding a wood staff, Davis is the consummate performer, and he brings a powerful sense of belief to his version of The Tempest. His Prospero, or the Old Man of the Cuban part of the story, is more sinister than bedazzling, less the theatrical conjurer and more the colonial tyrant (or, in Yuri's doubly subversive reading, a Latin American dictator like Fidel Castro).

Still, many of the great Shakespearean monologues remain intact, and it is a thrill to experience Davis in Prospero's elegiac speech that begins "Our revels are now ended" and concludes "this insubstantial pageant" with the thought that "We are such stuff/As dreams are made on, and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep."

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Davis' Cuban counterparts to Shakespeare's characters are well-developed, especially in the parallels between Prospero and the Old Man. But the conceit becomes muddled at times, such as in matching the daughters of each, Miranda from The Tempest and the Cuban Amelia, and in the projection of Caliban onto Bembe, a boy enslaved by the Old Man. Of the major characters, Ariel receives rather short shrift because he does not appear to have a clear Cuban connection, unless it is the evocation of four Orisha spirits around a sacred kapok tree.

As for Yuri, he sometimes seems to be like Shakespeare's Ferdinand, a noble survivor of the shipwreck washed ashore who falls in love with Miranda/Amelia, but the analogy is far from exact. And in Bembe's story Davis indulges in extensive invention involving the boy's roots in Santeria, though there are similarities in the back story of Caliban. Needless to say, it is not hard to distinguish between Davis' (mostly) prose and Shakespeare's poetry, with the unintended consequence, perhaps, of audience members tuning into Shakespeare while glossing over Davis.

Of course, The Tempest is a durable piece of work, and it has been subjected to all sorts of over-the-top concepts, drawing on ideologies from Marx to Darwin to Freud. One of the most famous reinterpretations is the 1950s sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, which features Robby the Robot as the Ariel figure and Walter Pidgeon playing the movie's Prospero. Julie Taymor's version makes Prospero a sorceress played by Helen Mirren.

Although Freefall's The Tempest has Davis playing all the roles (he also did the scenic and costume design) under the direction of James Oliver, it is not a bare-bones affair. The imaginative set is basically a large circular sandbox, with a claw-foot bathtub serving as Yuri's seagoing vessel and a shower spouting rainfall for the storm. There's a raised platform, reachable by five steps, and a curved, slatted wall, behind which is a three-piece band of cello, guitar and percussion (played by music director Burt Rushing). Composer Nicholas White's incidental music is predominantly flamenco rhythms, with the choreography for Davis' earthy dancing by Carolina Esparza.

The suitably eerie effects include dissonant cello for Caliban/Bembe's sad, moaning sound. Mike Wood did the excellent lighting design.