[In the following review of director Conall Morrison's 2000 production of The Tempest at the Abbey Theater in Dublin, Fricker laments the lack of “magic” in this staging and reflects on its facile political overtones and episodic presentation.]

The Abbey has clearly tried to conjure a major theatrical event out of its first-ever production of The Tempest, but the one crucial thing that got left out was a clear interpretative take on the play. What results is a magic-free, plodding evening only partially redeemed by a magnificent set design from Monica Frawley.

This Tempest was not only the Abbey's final production of the millennium but the last under Patrick Mason's six-year tenure as artistic director. Interestingly, and generously, Mason opted not to helm here, choosing instead Conall Morrison, an Abbey associate director and Irish theater's golden boy of the moment (his production of Martin Guerre is currently touring the U.S. on the way to Broadway).

Morrison's past large-scale productions have reveled in the metatheatrical, displaying an ability to marshal all the forces of theater into a celebration of the medium itself; pairing him with the play that is often read as Shakespeare's own reckoning with the theatrical art would therefore have seemed inspired.

And Frawley's set indicates that the creative team has chosen to engage the play's meta-theatrical themes: The stage is dominated by a huge, dilapidated Victorian proscenium arch with its crimson velvet curtain still hanging in place; a matching tier of box seats is propped on the other side of the stage, past a sand-covered playing area, and several rows of clapped-out theater seats slant crazily up- and offstage.

The island where the action takes place is clearly meant to represent a theater (the Theater itself, perhaps), and its magical, supernatural qualities—the “rough magic” that Prospero harnesses and then abjures—are theater's ability to enchant an audience.

But that the script has been altered here to make the production's first line a frustrated shout from Prospero—“This island's mine!”—also establishes a political reading. This makes good, topical sense; Prospero's domination of the island and its native inhabitants is often seen as a parable of colonialism and its ending a model of reconciliation. Parallels to Ireland's troubled colonial past and the current spirit of peacemaking would seem to abound.

But after the vigorous launching of these thematic currents, the treatment of the play itself feels like something of an afterthought. The problems begin with the opening storm scene: There's so much energy put into the stagecraft—the mariners and nobles struggle on and around a rope ladder while Prospero's sprite-servant Ariel swings madly on a chandelier—that the dialogue gets completely lost.

There's nothing magical in the episodic presentation of different plotlines, which have never felt so unrelated. Miranda and Ferdinand meet, court, and fall in love; the displaced Italian nobles wander the island punning and plotting; and the angry native Caliban and the lost Italian servants enact their own master-slave drama.

A solid company of actors are allowed to do what they're individually good at, but there's no sense of ensemble. That Shakespeare is rarely performed in Ireland is clear in the company's uneven skill levels in speaking verse. The value of training is clearly in evidence in RSC veteran Lalor Roddy's wonderfully crystal-clear line readings as the chief schemer Antonio.

Lorcan Cranitch, in contrast, makes an inconclusive Prospero: His understanding of the verse seems uncertain, and when he's not visible, there's little sense that he is controlling everything through his magic. Ariel and the spirits look wild enough, with their long beaded braids and half-streetwise/half-wispy togs, but David Bolger and Muirne Bloomer's dances come off as set pieces rather than natural extensions of the action.

And what is the overall message here? At the end of the play, Prospero releases Ariel from slavery and she flees into the auditorium. The actors then all seem to drop character, chat among themselves, and settle down for a nice onstage nap. So theater is a pretense, an “insubstantial pageant,” and after conflicts are resolved we can all lie down together? Swell.

But the vile plotters Antonio and Sebastian, who have the production's strongest Northern Irish accents, stay in character; they sneer at the peaceful scene as the lights go to black. The pessimistic implication—that the current atmosphere of peace in Ireland won't last because the North is still angry—feels simplistic and tacked-on.

There have been many merits of Mason's reign as Abbey supremo, bringing bright lights like Morrison into the fold not least among them. But the pairing of this still-young director (he's 33) and Shakespeare's late play clearly feels premature. The Abbey, as a result, sees out the millennium with a whimper.