There are two kinds of people that came to watch The Tempest. A rare portion came for the love of Shakespeare’s work, to see his last one. For these viewers the “Sixty-Minute Shakespeare” was a wonder to see. Actors young and old from Samir Kahn ‘21 (Boatswain) to leading man Zackary Daub ‘18 (Prospero) showed consistently their fluency in Shakespearean script. When Daub could deliver a closing monologue, or Gus Kellerman ‘19 (Caliban) would introduce his character and actually comment on the language itself, it was clear that those who had a respect for the linguistics and came to understand not only the story but the significance behind it had a good time.

I was not one of those people. I went because my friends were in it and I happened to already be on campus. Walking into The Tempest five minutes late, my first question was “when does it start?” As I was led in the dark to a seat on the stage, (thanks to Meagan Yang ‘19) the story began to come alive even to my minimal understanding. While I couldn’t understand what Carly Lange ‘18 (Stephano) and Shivam Sachdeva ‘20 (Trinculo) were arguing about in a fake drunken scene, the audience couldn’t help but laugh along as we watched the actors seamlessly work through each sentence as if Old English wasn’t a new language to them.  With the audience so close, lighting mapped out by Chloe Garton ‘18 could shift to match the close-up details, from the pink of Kathryn McHugh’s ‘19 (Alonso) dress to the blue of Annalise Schlick’s ‘18 (Ariel) make-up and costume as she entered the stage.

The dialogues between Schlick and Daub, Daub and Anna Gvodas ‘20 (Miranda), Kellerman, Sachdeva and Lange, and every other interaction were fun to watch as the actors immersed themselves into the lives of their characters. In musicals, we rely on the fun of having characters explain the storyline clearly, but in The Tempest, a foggy storyline let us explore the characters from the microphone-free speeches to the body language and acting only visible when sitting on the stage with them.

If you came to The Tempest to hear Shakespeare’s story, but entered without a knowledge of the story in advance, you left every scene with an idea of what happened in the scene but no idea what was happening in the play. There wasn’t much room to enjoy the story, and if someone is bored easily until they fully understand a plot, then this is not the right play–and probably playwright–for them. To see friends and classmates showcase their talent, this was the best place, and I can confidently say that every part from Quan Pham’s ‘19 (Mariner) first and last line in his premiere Shakespearean production, to  Daub’s  pontification that narrated the night, was well delivered and well prepared for.