Stage Review: A Noise Within stages a storm of change

A stylish, seasoned approach and a fine cast led by Deborah Strang’s powerful female Prospero place “The Tempest” — Shakespeare’s odyssey of betrayal, shipwreck, dark magic, family matters and redemption — in good hands at classics-centric A Noise Within in Pasadena.

The production opens with a visual otherworldly bang: An actor, representing a wild storm at sea, is engulfed in a mass of billowing fabric as she manipulates a model of a foundering ship. It is a striking effect and emblematic of the show’s deliberately obvious stagecraft that incorporates actors on stilts, grotesque masks, ritualistic movement, lighting designer Ken Booth’s strobe effects, and Peter Bayne’s crucially atmospheric music and ocean sound design for the play’s setting — a magical isle “full of noises” that disturb and enchant.

The tempest-tossed ship is carrying those who a dozen years before had put Prospero and her (in this case) then-toddler daughter Miranda into a boat at sea, expecting them to drown: Prospero’s usurping brother Antonio (Time Winters) and co-conspirator King Alonso (Stephen Rockwell). Also on the ship are Sebastian (Rafael Goldstein), soon to enter a secret plot with Antonio to assassinate the king; Alonso’s counselor Gonzalo (William Dennis Hunt), a Prospero sympathizer; Alonso’s son, Prince Ferdinand (Paul David Story); and the king’s butler Stephano (Jeremy Rabb) and jester Trinculo (Kasey Mahaffy) — who will both shortly be conspiring with twisted island-dweller and witch spawn Caliban to murder Prospero.
The storm has been engineered by Prospero to bring those who wronged her to the magical island in order to wreak revenge, but innocent Miranda, now in her teens, dissuades her mother from killing them, and they wash up onto the island stranded and separated. As things tend to go in a Shakespeare romance, Miranda and Ferdinand fall for each other at first sight, and Prospero tests the young prince’s fidelity while sending her magical servant Ariel off to torment, and eventually round up, the other survivors.

Prospero’s gender-switch from male to female changes the play’s central father-daughter dynamic to that of mother and daughter, adding an authentic layer of conflicted maternal protectiveness and the shared vulnerability of women in a dynastic, male-dominated world. In her forceful interpretation of the role, Strang captures the nuances inherent in the switch and in the fearsome, vengeful survivor that Prospero has become.
She is complemented by Kimberleigh Aarn’s arresting Ariel, the enslaved spirit doing Prospero’s bidding in exchange for promised freedom. Aarn, dressed for the most part in storm colors of gray and black, shifts between dainty sprite and something from a much darker place.

Alison Elliott’s mien of innate grounded intelligence works against her portrayal of Miranda, Prospero’s unworldly, innocent daughter. While she is assured in the role, it’s a stretch to believe that this Miranda would react with wide-eyed wonderment and delight at the sight of Ferdinand — a spot-on Story as the besotted lover — her first glimpse of a human male.
(The cast of stalwarts includes Geoff Elliott, who co-directs this intelligently informed and lively production with Julia Rodriguez-Elliott. The adroit comic touch he brings to his portrayal of wretched Caliban is highly enjoyable, although a stronger hint of underlying pathos would dig deeper.)

Frederica Nascimento’s effectively spare set design includes stylized tropical trees and flowers. (The deft ensemble doubles as spirits and prop movers.) Angela Balogh Calin’s costumes are a fittingly eclectic mix of natty early 20th-century-style menswear, robes from antiquity, the ensemble’s sometime steam punk look and Ariel’s dramatic shift in appearance when, dressed like a Santeria priestess in voluminous red, she stands several feet above the stage on a platform concealed by a long skirt.
“The Tempest” is generally considered to be the last play written by Shakespeare alone, and Prospero’s ultimate relinquishment of magical powers, realized with poignancy by Strang, can be read as an author’s farewell to creative endeavors — yet audiences are left with a satisfying sense of anticipation for what is to come after this ultimately redemptive island fantasia.

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LYNNE HEFFLEY writes about theater and culture for Marquee.
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Infobox:

What: “The Tempest”
Where: A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd., Pasadena.

When: Repertory schedule: 2 and 7 p.m., Oct. 26 and Nov. 16; 2 and 8 p.m. Nov. 1; 7:30 p.m. Nov. 6 and Nov. 20; 8 p.m. Nov. 7 and Nov. 22. Ends Nov. 22.
Tickets: $40 and up.

More info: (626) 356-3100, Ext. 1; www.anoisewithin.org.