In Oldenburg’s “The Tempest,” Trusting The Text Pays Off

For this production of Shakespeare’s play, Oldenburgisches Staatstheateer used the 2007 translation by theatre studies professor, dramatist and translator Jens Roselt, who is a graduate of the applied theatre studies course at Universität Gießen and has worked closely, for much of his earlier career, with Erika Fischer-Lichte in Berlin. In the Oldenburg production, the language came across as lively, fresh, and near-contemporary. Designer Sam Beklik created a set with a large area at the back of the stage covered with an impressive landscape of rocks, all with gentle, soft, smooth and round edges rather than sharp-edged and much more dangerous spikes. The characters used the full range of ascends and descends to support their action, in line with their range of physical abilities: the island’s native, Caliban, was most agile, followed by spirit Ariel. Of the humans, Miranda was most agile because she has been on the island since early childhood, followed by Prospero, who was a little less agile due to older age. Of the newcomers to the island, Ferdinand was presented as a young sportsman, nearly matching Miranda in agility, whereas the others were less easily familiar with their unusual surroundings. Philipp Sonnhoff’s lighting design created a colorful island with projections onto the uniform beige of the rocks, and the colors of Beklik’s costumes came to the fore in that light. All characters had unusual, stylized wigs with hair in oddly sculpted shapes. Together, the impression was that of a rich fairy tale, where the design team intrinsically trusted Shakespeare’s text.

This was also true of the directorial approach chosen by Ebru Tartıcı Borchers, who has been resident director with the Oldenburg company since the 2024/25 season. Tartıcı Borchers’ production cogently narrates a fairy tale, full of color, life, surprising characters and events, a story of different shades of power and how people and other creatures deal with assumed, imagined, superimposed, and real power. Andreas Spaniol imaginatively juxtaposed Prospero’s wisdom and interfering anger. Tamara Theisen combined youthful innocence with natural brightness and wit. Darios Vaysi was all exuberant, virile, youthful male testosterone – it did need the calming effect of Prospero’s initial test of his love for Miranda! The spirit, Ariel, was sensed and perceived by Prospero, but always invisible to his eyes. Katharina Shakina made this chief spirit appropriately otherworldly. Ariel came across as androgynous, as a creature for whom gender was of no relevance. In terms of costume and wig, the character of Caliban was similarly undefined in terms of gender. Here, the production revealed perhaps its most striking casting choice: Caroline Nagel, an actress who is in her early sixties (b. 1963), played Caliban. The character’s age was evident: it underlined the long duration of that character’s suffering, initially under Sycorax, then Prospero, and it emphasized Caliban’s high level of exasperation and the urgency and despair of his claims to the island as his.

Matthias Kleinert was appropriately regally tedious as Alonso and Konstantin Gries appropriately nasty and intransigent as Antonio. Esther Berkel was cast both as Sebastian and Trinculo, while Florian Heise played both Gonzalo and Stephano. Both actors coped very well indeed with the challenges of presenting such different characters. For the ending of the play, only the courtiers were present, not Stephano and Trinculo. Thus, by necessity, and I believe unfortunately, Prospero’s reckoning and the general explicit and implicit degree of reconciliation had to fall short of their potential.