Catskill Mountain Shakespeare’s The Tempest

The Tempest. Directed by Jay Dunn. Catskill Mountain Shakespeare. At several venues, April 8-28, 2024. For this review – April 26, 2024, at Rose Hill Farm, Red Hook, NY.

The Catskill Mountain Shakespeare had an inauspicious beginning in 2020, with the pandemic forcing its initial season to be conducted online. But since then, it has steadily built up its presence and support, until the 2024 season now features two productions and a new youth company. Their website promises an experience that “weaves the timeless beauty of classic texts into the fabric of our community,” and their description of their work emphasizes community, diversity, and environment (both enjoyment of natural beauty and respect for sustaining it), with the hope that these together will contribute to performances that “revel in the transformative experience of the arts.”

At a time when AI and people’s decreased attention span have made me sometimes despair whether art can be either timeless or transformative, while others disparage DEI and sustainability as dangerous travesties of the “woke agenda” that they seek to eradicate, I definitely felt this relatively new troupe gave me cause for renewed optimism at the relevance and vitality of beauty, classic texts, and the arts, to which I as an educator and these performers have in our diverse ways dedicated our work. For 1.5 hours, we were all transported quite completely to Prospero’s isle and immersed in more edifying and enjoyable thoughts and feelings than we would have experienced in our regular entertainments.

When this reviewer visited, The Tempest was performed at Rose Hill Farm, an orchard with apples, peaches, and cherries, as well as strawberries and blueberries, in Red Hook, NY. As with any outdoor performance in this area, the natural setting – with nearby trees and plants lush from April showers, and mountains dark and mysterious in the distance – is an integral enhancement to the experience. As is the audience, which when I was there, was a mix of all ages, including parents with small children, whose frollicking near and behind the performers only added to the lighthearted, joyful atmosphere especially appropriate for this play.

The play itself was enacted by a very small troupe of five young actors, all double cast besides Jamie Feldner as Prospero: Alonso and Ariel played by Laurén Carter, Gonzalo and Ferdinand played by Kathleen Salazar, Miranda and Trinculo played by Lydia Stinson, Sebastian and Stephano played by Sarah Shine, and Antonio and Caliban played by Steele Whitney. The actors changed their roles by slipping on bigger costumes over their base layer, doing so while still visible to the audience (the whole thing being acted just in a field without stage or curtains, and with various props lying about, their exact purpose unclear until they were used by the actors). The double casting made for interesting contrasts and further comedy, especially with the imposing and completely confident Ariel transforming into the stammering and terrified Alonso, or the totally different varieties of villainy represented by Antonio (genteel and treacherous) and Caliban (bestial but direct and oddly sympathetic). As happens with enactments of such minimal production values, the staging (besides the overwhelming, natural beauty all around the players and audience) can be used to increase the effect on the audience: here, having unidentified, weird-shaped objects sitting on stage (ultimately to be used during the scenes with harpy and spirits and dogs), definitely worked to intensify the feeling of unreality and wonder intrinsic to this play.

This production did an admirable job of maintaining and deepening such ambiguity beyond mere uncertainty about physical objects on stage. Our reaction to Trinculo and Stephano can be unequivocal, as their scenes are the most straightforward (i.e. sight gags about drunkenness, flatulence, and where one puts one’s lips). Likewise unproblematic is the courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda – happy but not overly exciting. At the extremes of incoherent buffoonery or head over heels infatuation, the characters behave predictably and like their counterparts in other plays. But how we are to react to the play relies on what we make of the characters with ambiguous or unknown powers and motives – Ariel, Prospero, and Caliban. And for these, this production remained enigmatic throughout. I think this is the key to an effective staging of The Tempest, one in which we revel in (an apt word choice from the troupe’s mission statement) the wonder and sublimity of the isle.

Sitting in an Adirondack chair outside on a cool spring evening, sipping cold cider, surrounded by blooming apple trees – this would be a welcomed escape from the various ugly news stories of our current moment. With their expert acting and direction, the Catskill Mountain Shakespeare made it more worthwhile and valuable, by making the time intellectually stimulating, even spiritually uplifting. I look forward to other performances by this talented and dedicated troupe.

Iona University