Sturm oder Mr. Prosper’s Tempestations

The jury of the Theaterzwang festival characterized the “unique theatrical language“ used in Yehuda Almagor’s Shakespearian adaptation as “gloomy, exasperating and thought-provoking“. On a cheery-dreary fairy island he gets mixed up with his Ariels, Calibans, flying ghosts and omnipotent Prospero, who crazily spins his webs. Almagor creates his own Shakespearian world on the writing table, oscillating between reading, narration and incarnation in the character of Prospero, and that also with the help of the bottle...It is comic, humorous, and moreover, it is that which might be called the theatre of objects: all objects play together.

Rainer Wanzelius, Westfalische Rundschau

The theatre should be like Jazz: lively, sensual and physical.

Jehuda Almagor

To present Mr. Prosper, a clerk with a potbelly, glasses and a bald head, the classical Shakespearian text is a psychodrama – on a green writing table and its surroundings, which became his sole island, he replays an old story of multiple betrayal. Office aids become animated in the actor’s hands; scissors, paper punches and staplers are attacking, a ruler is beating rhythm, paper birds are flying around, and Prospero’s daughter Miranda or perfidious brother are produced from similar materials. The convincing office stylisation of the principal hero is a part of the play, therefore swiftness and motion culture with which his seemingly decrepit, asthenic body flings into a rhythmical dance with paper tubes or a large mirror comes as a surprise. By simple darkening or the subtle soundtrack mixed up of indefinite, possibly industrial or “nature’s“ sounds, Martina Winkel’s direction achieves a maximum effect.

Anna Grusková, Domino fórum