David Glass’ Tempting Tempest

by Azra Khalisa Azhar and Ainani Joe

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Said to be his last play ever written, The Tempest is one of the most adapted plays by British playwright, William Shakespeare, most commonly known as the Bard. Among the various adaptations, David Glass’ reimagining of The Tempest is one of the most prominent productions staged in Malaysia. Performed at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC) by the amazing cast of David Glass Ensemble and KL Shakespeare Players with partnership of the actors of Studio Seni Teater Rakyat, the play has gained the attention of many for its extraordinary plot that is distinctively unique from the original play.

Glass’ Tempest was performed for 4 consecutive days and each performance’s duration was about 2 hours long. The play consisted of only 7 actors. They are tremendously talented actors who put their heart and soul into each and every performance. Despite the small number, they were able to bring the audience together into their journey of hope, love, and redemption.

As excitement builds up for the play so does expectation and this reimagining of The Tempest left everyone in awe. Within a small space for a stage, the simplest props were used with utmost creativity. Multiple plastics – both colourful and transparent ones, covered the entire stage. There were transparent plastics hanging from the ceilings and this became the walls that separated the stage from the backstage. Behind the plastic, artificial lights were used to create shadows. These shadows acted as a way of telling the story going on in the background without disturbing the story happening on the stage.

Besides this genius way of using plastics, a cardboard box was cut and shaped into a ship, a house and even a laboratory. The usage of a lot of plastic was also to symbolise some present element of our nature now. The use of plastic shows the current state of our ocean being filled with tons of plastic bags. As an environmentally conscious person, David Glass found it appropriate to add this notion into his reimagined version of the Bard’s last play.

The story centers on the relationship of two brothers, Prospero and Antonio, who were played by Lim Soon Heng and Lim Kien Lee. Another story besides the two brothers revolves around Miranda, Prospero’s daughter was played by Nikki Basharudin. Ariel, Sebastian and Caliban were played by Lee Swee Keong, Zul Zamir and and Seng Soo Meng. The character that garnered the most interest was Ferdinand, played by Teo Jun Vinh. This is because Ferdinand initially loses his memory and when he is found by Antonio, he is told that his name is Ferdinand and that he is Antonio’s servant. However, at the end of the play, he regains his lost memory and it turns out that he is William Shakespeare! It is because of him that the main crisis manages to be solved.

Another twist in this play was that Ariel and Caliban were brothers – even though in the original piece, these two characters were separate magical beings, with one being a fairy and one a monster-like son of a witch. The fact that the Miranda that we saw was a ‘replica’ of the original Miranda that had originally died was also an element of surprise present in the play. She was resurrected by her father because she was the only one that he had in the world, using his magic and what he had devoted his entire life in researching – something that could bring things back to life through a process of science. After Miranda found out that she wasn’t really “Miranda”, she was engulfed with sadness, confusion, and frustration, which led to her drowning herself in the ocean, watched by Ferdinand and Prospero in pained agony as they called for her name in vain.

David Glass, the director of the production, whom has performed, directed, and taught in over sixty countries, put forth a reimagining of the original play because he wanted to change the way people view the play. He said that he wanted to put in place a much more powerful, urgent story set at the end of humanity.

In the word of David Glass himself, “It’s not a great Shakespearean story but it’s full of wonderful potential, particularly for theatricality and imagery”. The audience’s reaction to the production was mostly positive with many impressed by the symbolism, through the usage of shadows and multiple colorful and transparent plastic bags to portray certain elements of the play. The audience was also awe-struck by the brilliant flow of the play and despite it being totally different from the original play, they could still enjoy and appreciate it as much as the original.

As for the future planning of this event, during the Q and A session, the actors said that they would be performing the play again at the end of the year and there would be changes applied to the play because these kind of reimagined plays will evolve as time passes. They won’t be sticking to just one version of the reimagined play and will be experimenting more.

The inspiration behind this reimagined version of ‘The Tempest’ is films. David Glass is a big fan of these three films - The Blade Runner, The Alien, and Solaris. As such, he was inspired by these 3 movies for the re-imagined version of the Tempest – the three movies were set in a dystopian world, which led to his version of the Tempest to also be set in some sort of a dystopian world, where the world and nature is dying and Prospero is doing the best he can to help save nature and the world from Antonio who is trying to destroy the world.

Glass’ Tempest sure is a hard one to resist once you’ve got the taste of it as it is fresh, exciting, and an original masterpiece for an adaptation of the classic play. Reimagined plays usually have difficulties to capture people’s heart and attention but Glass’ is such a guilty pleasure in its own way that the show’s tickets for all 4 shows were sold out in just two weeks.