Back for its 26th season, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival returned to the Glen Friday night under a cloud-laden sky for what’s considered to be William Shakespeare’s last solo-written play. This production, directed by St. Louis Shakespeare Festival’s previous artistic director, Rick Dildine, has been streamlined to 90 or so minutes with no intermission, and atypically begins with a celebratory prelude. Alonso, the King of Naples (Kathryn A. Bentley), toasts their daughter, newly wed to the King of Tunis, allowing us an early glimpse of the royal entourage before their ship is caught in a violent storm on their way back to Naples. Not far away, Prospero (Nancy Bell), a magician and the deposed Duke of Milan, has been living with her daughter Miranda (Sigrid Wise) on an enchanted island after being left to their own devices twelve years earlier. Prospero’s brother, Antonio (Jeff Cummings), wanted to supplant the popular Prospero as Duke, and conspired with Alonso to send her and her then infant daughter off on a boat headed for the Mediterranean. During her years of exile, Prospero has been honing her skills and plotting her revenge, enlisting a fairy spirit, Ariel (Eliza Pagelle), to assist in achieving her ends. Then there’s Caliban (Chauncy Thomas), the son of a long-dead witch who used to rule over the island. The island, by rights, should belong to him, but Prospero uses her magic to bind Caliban to a life of servitude. It’s Prospero and Ariel’s sorcery that raises the tempest, causing Alonso, Antonio and the rest of their party to be washed ashore and scattered on Prospero’s doorstep - right where she wants them.
