These snowy, bone-chilling days of winter have arrived right on cue. For in Pittsburgh Public Theater’s new adaptation of “The Tempest,” Shakespeare’s stormy tale of a vengeful sorcerer who can whip up a storm, there’s also the cold, wintry view from a hospital window.
The framework for the magical play puts us in a room with a breast cancer patient who is facing disease and feelings of abandonment. Public artistic director Marya Sea Kaminski, who directs and adapted this all-female “Tempest,” chose the quiet in the eye of a patient’s personal storm before the tables turn and the Bard’s magical world comes into view.
Where:Pittsburgh Public Theater, O'Reilly Theater, Downtown.
When: Previews 8 p.m. Thurs.-Feb. 1, then through Feb. 24. 7 p.m. Tues.; 8 p.m. Wed.-Fri.; 2 and 8 p.m. Sat.; and 2 and 7 p.m. Sun. Check ppt. org for exceptions.
Tickets: $30-$80 ($16.50, students and age 26 and younger); ppt.org or 412-316-1600.
The hospital setting will include scenes captured by a camera that has been recording a time-lapse video looking out from a window of Allegheny General Hospital’s Breast Care Center.
“I think it’s fantastic we are setting our play in Pittsburgh in the winter, and we are in Pittsburgh, in the winter,” said Tamara Tunie, the stage and screen actress who will play both the patient and the magician Prospero. “The first morning it snowed, I woke up and looked out my window -- I was like, ‘Oh my God, yes, this is where we begin our play.’”
The play doesn’t loiter before Prospero’s magical island is revealed, with a set, lighting and costumes described as “amazing, imaginative eye candy” by Ms. Tunie.
The Bard’s still in charge
Despite a fresh makeover, the story proceeds as Shakespeare prescribed, in what many believe to be the final play he wrote on his own:
After being deposed from her dukedom (let's say realm), Prospero rules over a remote island where she lives with her daughter, Miranda. The magician conjures a tempest to force a shipwreck that brings her enemies to her. Aided by spirit-servant Ariel, Prospero subjects them to punishments and, along the way, all learn lessons of redemption, forgiveness and love.
Ms. Kaminski, making her Pittsburgh directorial debut, had seen other all-female versions of the play, notably Phyllida Lloyd’s at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York City, and was inspired to push the boundaries in her own way.
“I joke that everyone has a play that has followed them around, and this is mine,” said Ms. Kaminski, who had previously acted and directed “The Tempest.”
She revisited it when programming her inaugural season in Pittsburgh, and “and as I was reading through it, concurrently in my life I was happening upon all of these mothers who were struggling with breast cancer and ovarian cancer.” Their stories inspired her new portal into the Bard’s magical world, with continued reverence for the play that gave us, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on” and “O brave new world, that has such people in't!”
“The Tempest” is clearly a play about humanity, even within the confines of writing in the 16th and 17th century. There is no gender in the “we” and “people” in Shakespeare’s carefully chosen words.
After observing the sisterhood in the rehearsal room for a couple of weeks, Ms. Kaminski noted, “The thing that has happened that I did not expect, in the telling of the story, is it actually has removed gender. It’s not like the female Prospero wreaking revenge on [for example] the male Caliban — it has more complexity.”
Tunie, times two
In the role of magical avenger, protective parent and cancer patient is Ms. Tunie, best known as medical examiner Melinda Warner on the long-running “Law & Order: SVU” NBC TV series. The stars had to be aligned just right for the actress to have a long run — at two Pittsburgh theaters — in her hometown. Following “The Tempest,” Ms. Tunie will move into City Theatre’s regional premiere of “The Roommate.”
Born in McKeesport, Ms. Tunie grew up in Homestead and attended Steel Valley High and Carnegie Mellon University. It is Ms. Kaminski, seated beside her leading lady, who points out that while Ms. Tunie is onstage in Pittsburgh, she can be seen on Netflix in the BBC Two drama “Black Earth Rising.” Adding to her many powerful television roles, Ms. Tunie plays a United States official in a series about investigating war crimes.
The actress who began her career in musical theater appeared at City Theatre last year in her one-woman cabaret show. It was then she began talking with artistic producer Reginald Douglas about the contemporary dark comedy “The Roommate,” which opens March 2. The timing was facilitated when AMC (”sadly”) did not pick up a second season of “Dietland,” the TV drama in which Ms. Tunie co-starred with Julianna Margulies. She told City artistic director Marc Masterson — a friend since their CMU days — to call her agent and get the ball rolling.
“He waited a week,” she said with a laugh. “And his email to my agent and Marya’s email to my agent landed on the same day, within the same hour.”
Ms. Tunie had never met Ms. Kaminski, but after one phone call, she said, “Yes,” to “The Tempest,” and then she called Mr. Masterson. His first reaction was, “Ouch,” she said, but he agreed she couldn’t pass up the chance to play the prestige role in the heart of the Cultural District.
He called back five hours later to say that Laurie Klatscher, Ms. Tunie’s co-star in “The Tempest,” had signed on to do the play at City as well, “and would you consider doing both?”
“The irony was,” Ms. Tunie recalled, “that when those two offers came in, I emailed my agent and said, ‘Maybe I’ll do both, ha ha ha.’ ”
Ms. Tunie dove into her role as leader of the troupe. She has been staying in Downtown housing and realized many of the out-of-towners in the cast, like her, were going to be in town for New Year’s Eve.
“So I took a large portion of the cast out to Ten Penny, and we had a fantastic time,” she said. “It was really great to spend that time before we came into the rehearsal room. Also, I was bribing them so if I messed up, they would be kind to me,” she said with a winking smile.
Ms. Tunie said she was impressed by the way her castmates explored the city as rehearsals allowed.
“I was telling them when I was growing up, Downtown, you either worked or shopped or went to the movies, that was it. Nobody lived Downtown. This whole idea of living Downtown is just fantastic.”
They have a texting chain that’s going constantly.
“I literally got a text today about a shoe sale,” Ms. Kaminski said. “Everybody’s got a strong winter boot game,” said her star.
Essence of Shakespeare
The director, who took her Public post in August, and her hometown leading lady first bonded quickly over Ms. Kaminski’s new approach to the Bard’s work.
“One of my hopes is to make Shakespeare accessible, to take these plays and show they are not museum pieces but living, breathing stories that have something to teach us about power and parenting and forgiveness,” Ms. Kaminski said.
Explaining the opening that may take audiences by surprise, Ms. Kaminski drew an analogy to “Peter Pan” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” which are grounded in reality before taking flight into worlds of imagination.
“We enter through a portal,” she said. “And if all goes as planned, we get this entry point through this modern-day world into Shakespeare’s world.”
One person who was immediately drawn into the portal was the star of “The Tempest.”
“I responded immediately because a lot of what I’ll call the fat of the play has been trimmed away, and you really do get to the essence of the events that happened,” Ms. Tunie said. “And then the concept, this idea of taking a very modern and relevant situation and letting that be the launch point for the play — I was excited about exploring that.”
The storm is brewing. Let the exploration begin.
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg. Sign up for the PG performing arts newsletter Behind the Curtain at Newsletter Preferences.
First Published: January 23, 2019, 12:30 p.m.