Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
A “tempest” seems the inevitable outcome when the masician Prospero, his daughier Miranda, Prince Ferdinand, Ariel and the monster Caliban try to co-habit in a single actor. But challenges are nothing new for Fred Curchack: previous endeavours include a Kathakali dance version of Hamlet English performances of nô theatre plays; and a show drawn from the poetry of William Yeats.
The setting is kept to a strict minimum—a screen, flashlights, candles, lighters, masks, an interplay of beams of light and shadows—as Curchack the magician invents a nightmare universe and skilfully zeroes in on the strange, baroque, almost monstrous in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON is the fulfillment of an actor’s fantasy of playing all the roles in the play himself, but the actor winds up being possessed by each role. This modern fable, this strange, controlled madness by a master of his art frightens and captivates with a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic.
A show written and staged by Fred Curchack, based on The Tempest, by William Shakespeare.
