South Africa

South Africa, Maverick Life

Shakespeare's enchantment shines as The Tempest captivates Cape Town audiences under the stars

Daniel Lasker as Ariel. Photo: Claude Barnado

13 Feb 2025

At Maynardville, under the stars and under the guiding hand of a sage director, The Tempest is a sui generis Shakespearean oddity that is more than the sum of its parts.

There was still a faint glimmer of sunlight in the sky above Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs as the stage lights softened and the play took us in its grip. In the gloaming, birds twittered in the trees, a dog barked in the distance, insects chirruped, the audience quit muttering, and Antoinette Kellermann’s Prospera — a gender-flipped version of the deposed Duke of Milan and a scholarly sorcerer who has become the de facto ruler of an enchanted isle — walked on to the stage and began to twirl her staff.

She conjured not only a literal tempest meant to wreck the ship containing all her enemies, but also summoned into existence a tempestuous literary cocktail, one into which William Shakespeare seemed to have put a bit of everything before giving it a good old shake.

The result is a play, perhaps a play within a play, perhaps a dream within a dream, that’s among the playwright’s last and certainly one of his wildest.

Misshapen monster

It’s pretty cool, some 400 years later, being reminded just how weird Shakespeare could get, how abstract and surreal his flights of fancy often were. In this play alone we get not only a shipwreck and a magician capable of controlling the elements, but assassination plots, political conspiracies, young lovers falling in love at first sight, ethereal fairy-like creatures, a misshapen monster, and plenty more of the stuff of which dreams (and nightmares) are made.

Director Sylvaine Strike has made of The Tempest something that comes exquisitely close to feeling as though the Bard himself is on stage, sharing his life’s purpose with us, speaking to us quite intimately.

Albert Pretorius is Caliban. Surrounded here by the Spirits played by Len-Barry Simons, Naoline Quinzin and Lungile Lallie. (Photo: Claude Barnado)

Prospera (Antoinette Kellermann) consults with Ariel (Daniel Lasker) while Miranda (Jane de Wet) sleeps in The Tempest. (Photo: Claude Barnado)

Chaos is forever threatening to unravel in The Tempest. (Photo: Claude Barnado)

That intimacy comes down to Strike’s instinctive decoding of Shakespeare on his own terms rather than forcing her will on the play. Despite designer Niall Griffin’s cleverly considered and beautifully rendered weathered-shipwreck aesthetic, it is not a production with aggressively attention-seeking concepts nor one that tries to spin a sense of celebrity around an icon like Kellermann (as has recently happened to the detriment of Sigourney Weaver attempting the same role in London’s West End).

Nor does Strike impose an agenda or push any particular issue — she trusts the Bard and his words enough to let him prevail. And, because all the elements — costumes, set, lighting, music, sound and performances — share this common goal of pursuing truth, what we get is just pure, honest, bracingly entertaining Shakespeare, his pearls of wisdom gathered together along with his effervescent poetry, his abundant (and, let’s face it, sometimes unhinged) imagination — and his humanity.

Strike achieves this clarity with a cast that understands what it is doing — and saying. Never mind the crisp uttering of every audible word, there’s an inherent honesty in the production, starting with performances that eschew stylisation in favour of naturalism, making it feel close to home, intimate, and very personal.

Convoluted plot

Kellermann (who on opening night was still finding her stride, something she’s no doubt done by now) gives Prospera a droll, knowing edge, conveying a strong sense that she has seen it all before and yet that in this world nothing is entirely knowable, leaving space for even the wisest among us to be taught a lesson or two. There’s a sense, too, of Prospera channelling Shakespeare himself, observing from the inside the mechanics of his story, witnessing the chaos that unfolds as he lets these characters and all their machinations loose on the world. Prospera may command the magical island but there’s a prevailing tension throughout that at any moment the convoluted plot — like a spell or curse gone wrong — might spiral out of control.

As Miranda, Prospera’s virginal daughter, Jane de Wet has all the wide-eyed wonder of a young, deeply curious person permitted for the first time to observe the world unfiltered. Her shock at the inherent wonder and beauty she sees in humanity quickly has her gushing with hormonal lust over Ferdinand (Jefferson Lan), the handsome castaway with whom she falls instantly head over heels. Hers is an innocent fantasy of a world without wrongs.

Prospera has at her command an implied army of supernatural beings. Whether they’re spirits, furies or elemental entities, they’re realised here as a trio of flexy-bendy beings (played by Naoline Quinzin, Lungile Lallie and Len-Barry Simons) who help execute some of Prospera’s magic and in the process add a bit of gymnastic verve to proceedings, helping to flesh out the island’s unreality, enacting the dreamlike state that prevails.

Chief among Prospera’s not-of-this-realm playthings is the elemental Ariel, played with such crisp, sprightly energy by Daniel Lasker. Done out as a kind of disco-era demigod, oozing androgyne sexiness, chest exposed, loveliness almost second-nature, he is a sturdy, reassuring presence, tasked with doing much of his master’s dirty work in return for eventual freedom.

Antoinette Kellermann as Prospera and Daniel Lasker as Ariel in The Tempest. (Photo: Claude Barnado)

The Tempest with Tankiso Mamabolo as Sebastian, Brent Palmer as Alonso and Siya Mayola as Gonzalo. (Photo: Claude Barnado)

A scene from The Tempest. (Photo: Claude Barnado)

There’s a tantalising edge to this master-servant relationship, however, which culminates with Ariel schooling Prospera in what it means to be human: in short, it comes down to empathy. And it’s a lesson that, ultimately, assuages Prospera’s animus towards her enemies.

While there is serious business afoot, there’s loads of hilarity, too, much of it thanks to a handful of doltish characters, summoned to lighten and perhaps subvert the potential heaviness of the convoluted plot. Chief among the clowns are David Viviers and Tankiso Mamabolo who step into the shipwrecked-and-clueless shoes of Stephano and Trinculo respectively. Viviers in particular gets it right to play Stephano the drunkard as a ditsy goofball, not ridiculously silly, but with just the right amount of doofus energy to keep the character unpredictable and engaging, like a tasty morsel in each scene he’s in. Some of that whacky unpredictability filters into his alternate role as Prospera’s brother and betrayer, Antonio, again to charming comic effect.

And there’s Caliban, a cute gimp played with such dainty charm and physical wit (not to mention curious vocal effects) by Albert Pretorius, who is, like Kellerman, surely a national treasure.

In spite of what the audience hears of his attempt to rape Miranda, Caliban is difficult not to like — or feel sorry for. Variously referred to as a slave and a servant, a monster and a mooncalf, Caliban is continually treated like some sort of beast to be subjugated, mocked, and belittled. He is a stand-in for countless innocents, creatures, tribes, beings, species, whatever, who have been cut down and trampled upon by conquering civilisations.

In Strike’s production, Caliban wins viewers over with a sort of sweet innocence and earthy intelligence. But, as a metaphor for clashing contexts, Caliban is also Shakespeare’s opportunity to raise questions about the perceived dichotomy between civilised and savage, nature and culture. Worth noting is that Shakespeare has given Caliban several sublime speeches as if to demonstrate how beautifully this so-called monster — spawn of the banished Algerian witch Sycorax — is able to muster poetry in what is essentially a foreign language.

Prospera (Antoinette Kellermann) looks kindly on Ferdinand (Jefferson Lan) and Miranda (Jane de Wet). (Photo: Claude Barnado)

Miranda (Jane de Wet) in The Tempest. (Photo: Claude Barnado)

Daniel Lasker as Ariel. (Photo: Claude Barnado)

And yet Strike doesn’t overplay the colonisation theme. She recognises that these conversations are already embedded in the text, that the acts of subjugation — enslavement, economic and technological mastery, imposition of a European language on a 'conquered' people — are already powerfully alluded to without needing to force-feed the audience.

This trust that Strike places in the text is deeply liberating.

It means the play is as open to interpretation as Shakespeare no doubt would have wanted it to be: he was, after all, a poet and storyteller, not a purveyor of doctrine or dogma. His plays are not here to provide answers but to make us more profoundly aware of the questions.

It is to her great credit that, in submitting to Shakespeare’s language, Strike has shaped a production that is not only gorgeous but that feels acutely pertinent at this current moment of global upheaval. Without any kind of didacticism, it urges us to remember what it means to be human, that as sentient beings we have the power to choose to embrace our enemies, hold hands with our neighbours and set free those enslaved by our thoughts, words and deeds. DM

The Tempest is playing in Cape Town as part of the Maynardville Open-Air Festival until 8 March. Tickets are available on Quicket.

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Misshapen monster

Convoluted plot