Shakespeare's The Tempest: A magic without magic in the State Theater!

Shakespeare's The Tempest: A magic without magic in the State Theater!

On the stage of the State Theater in Lower Austria, the audience can expect a charged production of Shakespeare's “The Tempest”. The creative direction by Anne Mulleners shows a stage design that impresses with its skill, but also causes confusion. Loud Small newspaper the action is accompanied by frantic shouting as the characters emerge from a hatch like hand puppets. This production fails to explore deeper emotional layers - the quiet nuances are completely missing.

A chaotic spectacle

The striking visual design evokes the feeling of a washing machine with the characters being tossed around. The ensemble's dazzling costumes in particular add to the confusion. The main actor, Michael Scherff, in the role of Prospero, exudes perplexity, which is directly reflected in the production. The confusion is compounded by double casting, such as Tobias Artner, who plays both Ferdinand and Stephano. Affected viewers may come to the conclusion that the director's ambitions do not quite match the soon-to-be-emerging reality of the piece, as historical reviews have already pointed out.

As part of its global legacy, Shakespeare's The Tempest has generated worldwide resonance, even in the French theater landscape, as Charlotte Louisa Clark points out in her dissertation. In her work, which traces the play's history in France and the Francophone world, she highlights the relevance of Caliban as a symbolic character, reinterpreted in different versions. These modern adaptations reflect important social upheavals and offer new perspectives that go beyond the initial depictions. Through this interpretation, Caliban becomes a voice of the oppressed - an aspect that is neglected in the current production from St. Pölten, which is loud Birmingham University in turn questions the relevance of the piece in today's context.