Outdoor theatre is by nature vulnerable to the weather, but there is a sense of a grand coincidence when an almighty storm whips up around this Poznań street performance of Shakespeare’s play, threatening to upstage its tumultuous drama.Teatr Biuro Podróży’s production at the Stara Rzeźnia, a former abattoir turned into a cultural space, was delayed by half an hour. But the elements provided a sublimely atmospheric accompaniment to the drama.
Thunder within the soundtrack became indistinguishable from the real thing. As lightning cracked across the shipwrecked boat carrying Antonio, who fetches up on this enchanted isle, it seemed like part of the lighting design. The company,which has long staged outdoor works across the world, spun its own magic, the actors sodden but heroically undeterred.
Directed and co-written (with Marta Strzałko) by company founder Paweł Szkotak, this production is inspired by Shakespeare’s text rather than being a straight-up enactment. After the opening storm, the set is cracked apart and swivelled around to form promontories on the island, as well as the grounded remains of the boat. Stumps of trees scattered in the foreground are visual symbols of eco damage.
Łukasz Matuszyk’s magnificent score reflects an island full ofaural enchantments – “sound and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not” – switching the tone between storybook delight and electronic rumbles, dread groans and pumping house beats.
The Tempest is part of the outdoor offering at Malta festival, a multidisciplinary programme in its 35th year, and the show is travelling to the UK as part of an international tour. The festival this year is celebrating tradition and reinvention. This company give a microcosmic homage to this paradoxical mission in its early faithfulness and late disruption of Shakespeare’s text. It is mostly told through mime, music, physical theatre and inventive visual spectacle.
Prospera is a female magician, Caliban her indentured slave in a suit with sinister bandages around his face. He is forced by Prospera to extract natural resources from the isle, hacking away at tree stumps with his tools (the eco message of the show has been carried through in production values, with much of the set crafted from reclaimed materials, including salvaged doors from Poznań tenement houses). Ariel is an imposing fairy on stilts. All hover between the delightful and dreadful.
The seven-strong cast (Bartosz Borowski, Łukasz Kowalski, Paweł Stachowczyk, Marta Strzałko, Karolina Wensierska, Tomasz Wrzalik, Maciej Zakrzewski) bring stunning physicality to their parts. The drunken scenes involving Trinculo, Stephano and Caliban play out with surprising freshness and wit, involving beer and a wheelbarrow. The romance between Miranda and Ferdinand is water-bound in its motifs – the latteremerges out of the storm in bikini bottoms like a parody of a James Bond love interest – and there is lovely use of a pair of flippers. Endearing chemistry is created through the dances they do around and with each other.
The show stays faithful until the closing scenes, when there is a coup orchestrated that is far bigger than Caliban’s planned rebellion. The sound of a helicopter is heard as a giant plume of smoke envelops the audience, from which emerge military figures bearing machine guns. It is as if we, the audience, enter into the dream world as the smoke drifts over us and the tone switches once again. There is no tidy redemption for the sorcerer-coloniser. Her magical creatures flee or are caught and caged, like zoo animals.
Some loose ends are left dangling: Ariel seems simply to disappear; the young couple at the heart of the play, cocooned in their romantic bubble, seem impervious to the assault on Prospera’s isle. Maybe the message here is that only love will survive. The rain has cleared by the end of the night and despite the razed ground of this new ending, you are left with a delightful sense of invention, play – and, yes, magic.
Malta festivalruns until 28 June. The Tempest is presented byWatermans, at Bell Square, London, 19-20 September as part of theUK/Poland Season 2025. Arifa Akbar’s trip was provided by the Polish Cultural Institute and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, partners in the UK/Poland Season 2025 organised by the British Council.