She devils. Film-noir temptresses. Crazy women in attics à la “Jane Eyre.” In art of all sorts, women who speak up, sashay to a different drummer or who just challenge male authority often get branded by such less-than-flattering terms. And they often suffer violent or at least unpleasant ends. That’s what happens to Sycorax, the “blue-eyed hag” who dies before the action starts in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
It’s a retelling of her story, intertwined with that of 20th-century blues chanteuse Billie Holiday, that drives the production of Sybil Williams’ Stormy Weather onstage through October 27 from IN Series at the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Sprenger Theatre.
Director Alison Wong sets Williams’ work at Prospero’s Bar and Grill, an island nightclub symbolized by a dazzling steel scaffolding backdrop draped with streamers and strings of lights. By the rum-packed bar and in a Hawaiian shirt, that’s the Bard’s magician Prospero (Matty Griffiths), recast here as a mythology professor marooned on a Caribbean island. Sycorax’s orphaned son Caliban (Jabari Exum), an island native Shakespeare calls “a horrible savage,” is reimagined as a bar back and sometime drummer.
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But it’s the women who drive the multi-pronged narrative, both Sycorax herself (Michelle Rogers) and Ariel (Nigel Rowe). Rowe, with his asymmetric haircut and willowy green dress, summons both Shakespeare’s sprite and Billie Holiday. In his rich tenor, he sings the life of Sycorax using Holiday songs like “Stormy Weather” and “All of Me.”
Rowe’s rich, emotive vocal chops prove the highlight of the whole show, whether he’s summing up the troubled relationship of Sycorax and Caliban with “God Bless the Child” or detailing Ariel’s plight with “Willow Weep for Me.” (In the original play, Sycorax imprisoned Ariel in a tree, here she’s a put-upon nightclub singer.) A trumpet, string base and piano trio at stage right provides the backup, and when Rowe is singing, there’s a dreamy, Cotton Club like appeal to the whole thing, particularly since Atlas sells booze and theater-goers are seated at small tables with flickering faux candles.
The action picks up when Sycorax enters, not dead after all. In poetic verse and dance, she reveals she was a bar owner, mom and island girl before Prospero showed up and both loved her and stole her business and pride. There are some nice bits, broken up by those Holiday tunes, between Rogers and Griffiths, showing how their feet-in-the-sand romance flamed and then fizzled. And Griffiths, as an only mildly magical Prospero, has an affable, Jimmy Buffet-esque charm.
Stormy Weather closes October 27, 2019. Details and tickets
In addition to redeeming Sycorax and channeling bits of Holiday’s short and tragic life, Stormy Weather churns up a bunch of other stories. It seems that Sycorax is also a time traveler. Besides using Billie/Ariel as her spokes-singer/stand in, Sycorax relives her past lives as an African girl on a slave ship, the girlfriend of a dissolute jazz musician in the 1940s, and other embattled African-American women.
Reflection: Stormy Weather could change how we experience The Tempest forever.
Their stories spin past faster than the sort of storms the original Prospero conjured in The Tempest. And while Rogers imbues most of these extra characters with empathy and warmth, after a while, this feminist parade becomes harder to follow and a bit of a head scratcher. The links to The Tempest and Billie Holiday start to feel tenuous once these other chicks show up at the party, and there’s too much sudden jerking from little-mentioned character to little-mentioned character. And frankly, I wanted more Billie and Sycorax, who were compelling enough on their own.
Still, when Rowe is joking or crooning at the old-timey mic, it’s easy to feel transported to another time, place and latitude. Maybe a magical island?
Stormy Weather by Sybil Williams . stage direction by Alison Wong . Featuring Jabarai Exum, Matty Griffiths, Michelle Rogers, Nigel Rowe, bassist Percy White. Musical direction by Greg Watkins. Lighting designer: Marianne Meadows. Set designer: Jonathan Dahm Robertson. Costume design: B. Benjamin Weigel, Stage manager: Paulina Campbell. Assistant stage manager: Bryan Boyd. Produced by IN Series . Reviewed by Jennifer Barger.
