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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Lounge loves: Heuristic Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’
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Lounge loves: Heuristic Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’

This iPad app makes you feel like you are watching the play in a real theatre

David Hughes’ illustration for The Tempest.Premium
David Hughes’ illustration for The Tempest.

In an interview with Mint Lounge published last week, actor Ian McKellen said that in an ideal world, no one would have to read Shakespeare. The Bard’s plays are meant to be seen, to be heard. And to commemorate Shakespeare’s 400th death anniversary, he is attempting to make that happen with the Heuristic Shakespeare app—he is its series editor, along with British academic and writer Jonathan Bate.

The app has launched with The Tempest, presumably the last play Shakespeare wrote on his own, and in whose central character, Prospero, some see the Bard himself, bidding farewell to the stage. Both easy to navigate and easy on the eye—eminently collectible illustrations by David Hughes introduce both the app itself as well as individual scenes—it has serious stage actors, including McKellen, who plays the overthrown Duke of Milan, Prospero, speaking out their parts to the viewer, even as the lines from the scene appear under the video.

Reading, even listening to, Shakespeare requires a particularly keen ear, and this app attempts to sharpen it further by providing the meanings of the more difficult phrases and words that Shakespeare uses in his speech.

Another illustration for The Tempest
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Another illustration for The Tempest

But ultimately, how deep you go depends on you. One could simply be content to watch the video reading—without the costumes, the set, the entries and exits, it still has the ability to make one feel as though one were sitting at a performance. McKellen is McKellen: that deep baritone voice and articulate, unhurried pace of speaking are enough; that wonderfully wrinkled face and expressive eyes are enough.

Each actor has been chosen with care: Gonzalo (Derek Jacobi), the courtier who helped Prospero and his daughter Miranda when they were set adrift at sea by the Duke’s brother, Antonio, comes with a gentleness to his face; the usurper Antonio (David Foxxe), with his curling lips and haughty sneer, may never be trusted; Sebastian (Adam Levy), brother of the king of Naples, oozes with sarcasm; and Caliban (Johny Phillips), son of the sorceress Sycorax and now Prospero’s slave, cowering and rolling his eyes at the prospect of the torture awaiting him at his master’s hand, plays an untamed half-being with abandon. However, it is Sandy Grierson, playing the spirit Ariel, capable of much mischief, but imbued with an empathy and intelligence that Caliban lacks, who steals the show.

Indeed, rather than Prospero’s revenge, which drives the main plot of the play and is pieced together a bit too neatly at the end, it is the unravelling of his character through his authoritarian, often cruel, but sometimes paternal, relationships with Caliban and Ariel that is more interesting. It’s a dynamic that the actors bring alive in a way that could never have been possible if we were just reading the book.

That the producers should have chosen to be exclusive and make this app ( 370) available solely for the iPad (iOS 8 and later versions) is thus a travesty.

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Published: 03 Jun 2016, 08:38 PM IST
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