Review: The Antaeus production of ‘The Tempest’ is all sound and fury, signifying nothing

“The Tempest” encourages theater artists to go wild. The fantasy element of this late romance by William Shakespeare rejects literal-mindedness.

Realism would be laughable when dealing with a play set on a desert island ruled by Prospero, an exiled Italian duke who has acquired supernatural powers and has at his beck and call a spirit servant named Ariel. The plot, which encompasses a magic shipwreck, two revolutionary subplots (one involving a half-human creature named Caliban), and a love story out of a fairy tale, springs from a medium of pure imagination.

In March, the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, in collaboration with After Hours Theatre Company, premiered an innovative production of “The Tempest,” directed by Ben Donenberg. Peter Van Norden, one of L.A.’s most assured Shakespearean actors, played Gonzalo and virtually stole the partly immersive show with the clarity and resonance of his line readings.

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At the time, I wondered what Donenberg’s already strong production would have been like if Van Norden had brought his ability to seamlessly connect Shakespearean mind and mouth to the role of Prospero. So you can imagine how excited I was to attend the Antaeus Theatre Company’s production of “The Tempest,” starring Van Norden as Prospero.

I respectfully request a do-over. The production, directed by Nike Doukas at the Kiki and David Gindler Performing Arts Center in Glendale, is a cacophonous affair, teeming with directorial ideas boisterously fighting for attention.

The audience enters the theater as a band is jamming at thunderous volume and the cast is frolicking on a makeshift dance floor. John Ballinger composed the music that’s performed by cast members JD Cullum (guitar), John Allee (piano), and John Harvey (percussion). The staging strenuously strives to leave an impression of fun in capital letters, but the forced gaiety creates quite a racket.

A line of standing microphones at the front of the stage ensures that the noise level won’t diminish when the music subsides and the dialogue begins. The shipwreck scene that opens the play is ear-splitting in its shrieking and wailing.

The actors don’t need amplification in this intimate house, but Doukas has fashioned this “Tempest” as a 1940s-style radio play. Unfortunately, the actors don’t adjust the volume of their stage voices. As a result, Shakespeare’s play seems as though it’s being delivered through a bullhorn.

Sound effects are created by the actors in the radio tradition. The difference is we can see the actors mugging and gamboling. This is a production in which Ariel (Elinor Gunn) seems headed to a Zumba class, Caliban (Cullum) resembles an aging hippie and Miranda (Anja Racić) and Ferdinand (Peter Mendoza) look like they’re on a casting call for the young romantic leads of a new soap opera.

The actors speak their speeches as though they’re invisible to the audience, illustrating their meanings through their exaggerated cadences and stretching out every rhetorical curlicue. Yet we can see their bulging eyes, jutting tongues and unrestrained comic business. It’s as if a radio drama has been overlaid on a stage play. At times, I wondered if I had accidentally stumbled upon a summer theater camp for pent-up actors.

Last year, Van Norden played Polonius in an otherwise unmemorable Antaeus production of “Hamlet” and made the character seem more fascinating than even Hamlet. Now cast in the main role of “The Tempest,” he sadly gets swallowed up in the din.

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Seated at a table with a microphone before him, he might as well be in a studio recording an audiobook. Except he’s denied the calmness of such an environment, and his interpretation of the role suffers from the commotion. Prospero is an isolated figure, but here he seems like he might wish to crawl into Caliban’s cave.

Have directors lost all confidence in Shakespeare’s ability to hold an audience rapt through dramatic poetry alone? In trying to make “The Tempest” more audience friendly, theatergoers may find themselves ducking for cover.