Director David Herskovits throws a 20thbirthday for Target Margin Theater by drawing on some five centuries of theatrical traditions with in his joyously overstuffed staging of The Tempest. He impressively marshals a bounty of whimsical inventiveness for the Bards tale about Prosperos revenge on the men who banished him to a desert island. The mashup isnt always successful, but it has a cumulative effect that proves intoxicating.
Hunter Canning
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The Tempest
By William Shakespeare
Here Arts Center
145 Sixth Avenue
212-352-3101, here.org
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The plays fussy, aurally bombastic opening underwhelms, setting the stage for a potentially disappointing production. But when the theater transforms into an 18th-century jewel box (thanks to scenic designer David Birn), its nearly impossible to not be sucked into the piece. Birns work is matched by both Carol Baileys merry, period-traversing costumes, and by the eight songwriters whove penned original music that references jaunty airs to edgy electronic.
The shows design is so consistently strong you may find yourself wishing the performers work was as uniformly exceptional. The clowns disappoint, and Mary Neufields turn as the malevolent sprite Caliban is heavy-handed. Thankfully, though, Steven Rattazzi, grave and well-spoken as Prospero, and Clare Barron, delicately ethereal as his daughter Miranda, deliver turns that are simultaneously modern and classical, and also, quite simply, bewitching.