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One of the things that makes Shakespeare's "The Tempest" truly immortal is that, in figuring out a way to depict Prospero's power, the director inevitably makes it his own. In Sam Mendes' vision, that power is simultaneously ancient and modern, shamanic and Jackson Pollock. Clad in a ratty robe with feathers at the tips, Prospero (Stephen Dillane) paces around a circle of sand, splashing it with water from a metal bucket. More than a dictator, father, or god, he seems to be an artist not unlike Mendes himself, fixated on framing the image he's created.
Most productions of "The Tempest" emphasize the island as a stage-within-a-stage, but this one takes it to a whole new level. After Prospero's storm shipwrecks King Alonso (Jonathan Lincoln Fried) and his crew — the Italian nobility on whom Prospero seeks elaborate revenge for his exile — they are each placed in chairs at the back of the stage, kept in stasis over a reflective pool of water. Essentially, everything beyond the circle is Davy Jones' Locker: a repository of unused props. When they're needed, they return to the foreground, reanimated.
With the help of Ariel (Christian Camargo), his androgynous pixie-slave, Prospero is able to seriously mess with the new inhabitants of his barren rock. He controls their minds, puts them to sleep and unleashes nightmares upon their senses. Of course, he's not a complete asshole: This Prospero is much more involved in the orchestration of his revenge than the revenge itself, and when his angelic daughter Miranda (Juliet Rylance) falls in love with the king's son Ferdinand (Edward Bennett), he has a change of heart.
"The Tempest" can be about a lot of things, but this version is about Prospero and Ariel as austere, sometimes conflicting creative types. Together, they hover around the sand circle as silent puppeteers, unlit but ever-present, staring intently at their work. Camargo, whom you might remember as the Ice Truck Killer on "Dexter," is all piercing focus, providing an unusual but welcome break from the character's typical flightiness. Dillane's performance is similarly disciplined, and hard to swallow at first if you're used to Prospero as a booming Gandalf type (especially since Ron Cephas Jones plays Prospero's slave Caliban so much like Gollum). Dillane is powerful in a more modern way, presidential rather than kingly.
This impression is enhanced by the unorthodox costume design. Other than Miranda and Caliban, each character wears a contemporary uniform of some sort, from business suits to military regalia. With a sleek blazer over his bare chest, Ariel looks like he could be Prospero's intern, and sometimes acts like it. But the play's overall aesthetic, far from being businesslike, is a potent mixture of elemental abstractions. Reflections from the water dance enchantingly on the back wall, as do silhouettes. The music, produced by a percussionist and violinist who blend into the scenery, lingers in the air.
The production is spectacular, absorbing and completely self-conscious. The fancy effects that surround the sand circle only serve to reflect back on it, compounding its status as a snow globe of Prospero's design. Everything — including Miranda, a name invented by Shakespeare — is artifice; a "baseless fabric" and an "insubstantial pageant," in Prospero's words. But to Mendes, the image is everything.
"The Tempest" is playing at the BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St.) through March 13. Tickets ($25-95) are available through tickets.bam.org.
