January 23, 2003: Shakespeare, The Tempest
Evening. The Old Vic. Sheffield Theatre Crucible production, directed by Michael Grandage. Derek Jacobi as Prospero
As it happens I have seen two plays today directed by Michael Grandage. Grandage is now the artistic director of the Donmar and associate director of the Sheffield theatre with primary artistic responsibility for the Crucible. (I take it there is more than one theatre in the Sheffield complex.)
This is a brilliant production of a brilliant play, one of Shakespeare’s very best. Grandage and the designer, Christopher Oram, have hit on the wonderful idea of constructing a ruined eighteenth-century theatre on this desert island where Prospero and his daughter Miranda have been stranded. And the Old Vic is possibly the best theatre in London where this idea might be realized. The theatre has a long history, from its earliest days as the transpontine Royal Coburg to the rehab of the theatre under the ownership of Ed Mirvish. (Before he bought it, in the 1980s, I saw the original production here of Olivier’s Othello, with Maggie Smith as Desdemona and Frank Finlay as Iago — memorialized in the film directed by Stuart Burge.)
It is a pleasure to stand at the edge of the stage and, turning one’s back to it, look up at the three levels of audience surround, tastefully decorated, with gold leaf a prominent but not overwhelming feature, as the gold leaf at the Haymarket now is. The proscenium arch, brought no doubt from Sheffield, well upstage, is somehow reminiscent, architecturally and in decor, of the Old Vic proscenium arch, beyond which the rough rude planks, moderately raked up to that ruined proscenium, extend well out into the auditorium (my seat, in Row H, was the second row back, an indication of how far this forestage, reminiscent of the Drury Lane forestage in the age of Colley Cibber, extends into the auditorium). And even the ruined proscenium as its own, somewhat diminutive forestage, was collapsed into a kind of V-shaped depression. And there are doors, or rather open, undecorated doorways, in the ruined proscenium arch, the left one used for entrance and egress, the right one piled knee-high with old books, evidently those books given to Prospero by Gonzalo and “prized above his dukedom.” A magical effect altogether, speaking eloquently of the meta-subject of the play, the farewell to the theatre implicit in Prospero’s farewell to his magic. This ruined stage even encompassed Caliban’s cave, which is hollowed out of the base of the stage front on the right.
The play begins suddenly, while the house lights are still on, with a near-deafening clap of thunder and courses of lightning, as the house lights go suddenly dark and the tempest engulfs the ship and the mariners. As the storm subsides, the forestage goes dark, and the upstage, where we have seen billowing curtains as the storm raged, is lighted from behind, revealing Prospero, in his magic garment and wielding his magic staff, app