Tempest - A Musical Enchantment, The

Sweet ECA    16 - 30 August @ 14.45    Aurora/WCSU

The Tempest – A Musical Enchantment at Sweet ECA is well named and was well received by its audience the day I saw it. The actor playing Prospero, certainly, had the presence to command the stage and be the focal point of the piece. The performances of Ariel and Caliban were effective too. Shakespeare’s text is cut to a minimum and the programme lists 15 musical numbers. The piece is pleasant overall, certainly, but I am not sure that the music here actually adds anything memorable and not all the singing is entirely tuneful and sometimes this matters more than others, but it does here in the harmony writing. Just occasionally the text delivery by the cast from Aurora/WCSU shed a light on Shakespeare’s original that I had not spotted before but this was an occasional delight in a wash of something that seemed to be neither one thing – a performance of Shakespeare, nor another – a piece of effective musical theatre.

I am sometimes not sure about the effective use of microphones in musical theatre and this was somewhat heavy-handed here. In the tempest itself at the top of the piece, a difficult wall of sound flowed over the audience but nothing was distinct within it. This settled down somewhat once the action focused on the characters and all ended well, but despite some endearing moments, I was left wondering what the point of it all was.