Annaliese Connolly

Review of Shakespeare's The Tempest (directed by Janice Honeyman) at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon and on tour, February–April 2009

One of the performance traditions that has developed during the past 30 years or so has been to foreground the themes of race and colonialism in The Tempest, usually by casting black actors in the parts of Caliban and Ariel and by identifying the island with a particular site of colonialism. This interpretative paradigm is now so familiar that it leaves itself open to criticism of over-prescribing the play’s meaning and having a reductive impact on the imaginative possibilities of the play. The recent RSC production, a collaborative project between the RSC and the South African theatre company, The Baxter Theatre Centre, based in Cape Town, met this potential criticism head on and produced a clear, political reading of the play which was delivered with passion, conviction and above all style. Indeed it would have been surprising if the production had chosen to do anything else in view of the company’s cultural heritage. The two central roles of Prospero and Caliban were played by two of South Africa’s best-known actors, Antony Sher and John Kani, and the cast, designers and director were all South African. On the surface the production presented the play as a colonial narrative which spoke to the history of European colonialism in Africa, but it cleverly blended historical specificity: offering clear allusions to the history of apartheid in South Africa in the twentieth century, with a more wide-ranging consideration of struggle in Africa across the centuries, whilst also looking to other comparable sites of colonial rule in India. The director Janice Honeyman suggested that such an interpretation underlined the play’s relevance for audiences both in South Africa where the production premiered and in the UK: ‘‘It is our job not only to reflect Shakespeare’s intention, but also to find an equivalent application of his message in a more accessible context. We must make our version identifiable and pertinent to our own audiences. After all, that’s what Shakespeare did in his time. So what more recent history and setting will we understand and have experienced? For me the answer is to do a colonial depiction of the play.’’ What the production did with great dexterity, however, was to infuse this political reading of the play with uplifting, colourful, and material aspects of African culture, including stunning costuming, puppetry and dance, which countered those charges that such a reading of the play necessarily prevents a production from considering the play’s interest in magic and performance.