by William Shakespeare

Originally presented at Victory Gardens Theatre (Chicago);

Music by Douglas Wood; Directed by Michael Barto

MUST LISTEN: #4 Confutatis Maledictis; #5 Qui Quid Latet; #7 Where the Bee Sucks/Dona Eis Requiem

This was a very interesting production to work on. Michael and I had worked together on a show called The Expense of Spirit for Bailiwick’s Gay Pride series, which later went on to NYC to play at the Gay Games IV, as well as an extended run at Victory Gardens.

Michael was the best of directors and the worst of directors. First off, he was great at casting. Secondly, he was very generous in giving enormous freedom to both cast and designers. Surprisingly on the Tempest, egos were not the problem but synthesis was. When we put things together a lot of the elements, interesting in their own right, weren’t really carried through.

To complicate things, we had an unavoidably protracted rehearsal period, which meant that a lot of good stuff that would have worked got thrown out in favor of more self-indulgent impulses. Editing wasn’t Michael’s strong suit, God love him.

For my part, I was proud of my contribution to the show. Michael’s thesis of the play was that Prospero was trying to get his affairs in order before he dies and so I wrote a Requiem that underscores the show. Since a traditional requiem mass and The Tempest have different dramatic arcs, I allowed myself the liberty to pick and choose which lines of the requiem to highlight to support a given scene.

Also, Mr. Shakespeare had some lyrics of his own that I needed to include. As in Lizard Music, I got to operate in two modes: the sprites and Ariel had a dreamy, impressionistic sound and the requiem sections had a more 18th century sound. (The way our production was designed, it was set in a sort of subtly non-specific past, with men with swords and capes but eyeglasses for instance.)

As Ariel, we had the wonderful actor Ajay Naidu. As his sprites, we cast six singers who effected Ariel’s charms with their vocals. And when I needed that big choral sound, to my happy surprise, most of the rest of the actors had good to excellent voices.

Onstage, the result was often powerful. Especially the final ‘Dona Eis Requiem’ that went under Prospero’s Epilogue:

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint: now, ’tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

When I composed it, the song accidentally fit perfectly on my first try. Try reading it yourself over the music.

The show was a critical disappointment, unfortunately, though my music received some nice notices.

The recording here doesn’t do it justice. I could only get the sprites to come into the studio so the big choral numbers were compromised. We recorded it quickly, Ariel was unavailable and so I sang his part. Not ideal, to say the least, but decent enough. What we lacked in time, we made up for with extra reverb, evidently.

As a final note, this was to be Michael Barto’s last show before he died of complications due to AIDS. He was a tornado and his friends were like a trailer park. But he occasionally took us to Oz.