‘Feast’ loses sight of the ‘Tempest’ within

• Reprints

Samuel Taylor (left, as Ariel) and Adrian Danzig (as Caliban) star in “The Feast: an intimate Tempest.”

Updated: January 27, 2012 2:21AM

There is magic ­and gorgeous imagination to spare at “The Feast: An Intimate Tempest,” the newly envisioned take on Shakespeare’s play about transformation, conjuring, power games, exile, captivity, love, revenge and all manner of sea-change.

But there also is tremendous frustration. For despite all the brilliant visual, sonic and dramatic astonishments of this co-production by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Redmoon, the essential story Shakespeare tells in “The Tempest” — even for those wholly familiar with the play — ends up feeling terribly muddled and close to indecipherable. And this has little to do with the fact that it has been whittled down to 90 minutes.

Without question, the ingredients for something truly rare and wondrous are all here thanks to designer Frank Maugeri and the show’s three marvelous actors — John Judd (as Prospero), Samuel Taylor (as Ariel) and Adrian Danzig (as Caliban). But director/adapter Jessica Thebus needs to go back to the original text and focus on the basic elements of narrative, and the relationships among the play’s characters, so that the great beauty and innovation of Maugeri’s work does not replace understanding.

In many ways this production suggests “The Tempest” is not so much about a ruler, Prospero, forced into exile on a remote island after his power was usurped by an evil brother. Instead, it often feels as if it is about an aging, tyrannical, yet altogether brilliant theater director who has just two actor-assistants left in his troupe. And, though each yearns for their freedom, he tries to browbeat and threaten the pair into submission as they act out (and sometimes defy) his commands. Along the way they also employ a series of astonishingly lifelike masks and puppets, as well as their own impressive lexicon of voices and movement styles.

This might be a perfectly valid interpretation, and one that fully justifies all the exquisite special effects that unfold on the raised, crossed platforms of rough wood planks that evoke a wharf, a ship’s deck, a banquet table, or a theater stage. And there is great humanity in the mask and bony arm representing Prospero’s beloved daughter, Miranda (whose eyes are so real they hint at the presence of a soul, with Taylor, an actor of quicksilver charm and immense grace, bringing her to poignant life). But her romance with Ferdinand, who washes up on shore after a storm set in motion by her father, is never developed. Nor are the threats to her from Caliban, though Danzig is a roaring engine of beastliness.

Masks and puppets suggest the two-faced nature of additional characters whose identities remain hazy at best. And magic spells, torments and much else are hauntingly suggested in the work of designers Neil Verplank, Andrea Everman, Jesse Mooney-Bullock, Sue Haas, Anna Glowacki, Andrew H. Meyers and Mike Tutaj, and in the haunting sound and music of Jeffrey Allen Thomas.

Judd’s bearing and sonorous voice make Prospero’s immense emotional turmoil palpable, and he delivers his big speeches with elegance and gravity. But while he oversees a sensory feast, the audience is starved for a nourishing script.