Bam’s transatlantic Bridge Project got off to a shaky start last month, when director Sam Mendes sucked all the playfulness out of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” and the American actors paled next to their British colleagues. I can’t say I was looking forward to the troupe’s second offering, “The Tempest,” which opened last night.
But several weeks into the program, the ensemble has gelled and the discrepancies have been evened out, while Mendes’ downbeat approach fits this fantastical, melancholy show better. (The two plays alternate performances through March 13.)
When a bunch of noblemen get shipwrecked on an island, they don’t realize their misadventure has been engineered by Prospero (Stephen Dillane), a Duke cast out to sea by his own brother and left for dead.
Prospero’s been marooned for 12 years, during which he raised his daughter, Miranda (Juliet Rylance), and practiced his spells. The magician’s right-hand sprite is Ariel (Christian Camargo), whose powers include invisibility. This will come in handy when dealing with the new arrivals, who include Prospero’s treacherous brother (Michael Thomas) and a pair of entertaining drunkards (Thomas Sadoski, Anthony O’Donnell).
Dillane’s Prospero is a gentle father and scholar, both manipulating and observing the proceedings with a benevolent detachment. It’s a contained, thoughtful portrayal that matches Mendes’ elemental staging: a circle of sand, a shallow pool. Water and earth, reason and the supernatural, the seen and the unseen convincingly coexist on this island outside of the normal time-space continuum.
Ariel fits particularly well in this twilit world. With his spectral skin and messy dark hair, he lands somewhere between brooding undead and the sexually ambiguous Lou Reed of the ’70s, and Camargo gives him an appealing shy reserve.
Still, it would have been great if the tone didn’t stick so much to the moody middle, especially since there are a few tantalizing flashes of invention. (The surprise Mendes pulls out before Miranda’s engagement is just lovely.) More of that would have been welcome: Unlike the castaways, the audience is ready and willing to be enchanted.