Over the last decade or two, the Public Theater has proved that one of the best ways to present Shakespeare’s comedies is to rework these often-dated chestnuts as one-act musicals, where the broadness of the characters seems a better fit and the wordplay can be more easily adapted in lyric form. Michael Friedman’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shaina Taub’s Twelfth Night and As You Like It all succeeded by embracing the bones of the Bard’s original but adapting the material to a more modern medium and sensibility (while often retaining a period setting).
Now The Public is presenting a one-act musical version of The Tempest, with a score by Benjamin Velez, that is playing for just one week at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater (in that outdoor venue’s final production before a radical renovation expected to last until the summer of 2025). The Tempest is not technically a comedy, though it contains many comedic elements and ends on a mostly upbeat note (with a wedding and no deaths). And the relatively streamlined plot feels ripe for musical treatment.
It’s a pity that Velez’s score is a mostly derivative one, with each song playing like a mash-up of several previous, better musical theater classics (you’ll recognize snatches of everything from Fiddler on the Roof to Wicked to Hamilton). And the songs are interspersed with book scenes that too often have the odd effect of repeating plot points that already delivered in lyric form. Hamilton alum Renée Elise Goldsberry sings magnificently as the exiled and embittered duke Prospero, but she’s saddled with being the Queen of Exposition. Her opening song lays out her predicament — betrayed by her brother, banished with her young daughter to a remote island, and bent on revenge when that brother and the complicit King of Naples are shipwrecked on her very island — but then she delivers that same set-up in non-verse form.
Her daughter, Miranda (Naomi Pierre), and the king’s heir (Jordan Best) get a funky meet-cute duet called “Vibin’ on to You,” while the comedic trio of Caliban (Theo Stockman) and the drunks Stephano (Joel Perez) and Trinculo (Anthony J. Garcia at my performance) deliver a witty and rollicking jam for life’s underachievers: “Cause with a drink a man can think a fool can be a king.” These production numbers stand out as a showcase for the plus-size ensemble, ages 5 to eightysomething, who participate in the year-round Public Works program that brings theater-making to community groups in all five boroughs of New York City. Credit also Tiffany Rea-Fisher’s energetic choreography, which makes the most of that huge cast, and especially Wilberth Gonzalez’s delightful costumes. (The winged angel ensemble for Jo Lampert’s otherworldly sprite Ariel is a show-stopper.)
There’s a lot to admire here, and a whole lot to enjoy, and the musical format and Goldsberry’s soaring vocals help to mask some of the play’s more stubbornly problematic aspects. (Just last fall, Mohegan theater-maker Madeline Sayet presented a one-woman show at the Public’s downtown space that questioned Caliban’s traditional depiction, repeated again here, as a “savage” who deserved to be enslaved by a high-born island newcomer like Prospero.) And Goldsberry’s Prospero projects a more maternal vibe than that of a wizard hellbent on vengeance, making her pivot to forgiveness and reconciliation in the final scenes seem rather perfunctory and anticlimactic.
If only things were that easy. But Broadway musicals can make the hard moral choices seem inevitable, and coming at not too steep a cost. And while this Tempest may not be very convincing as drama, it’s hard to quibble with a production that arrives on an al fresco stage in late summer with so much good will, and obvious skill. A little indulgence on the audience’s part can set us all free.
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