Hard to believe: Peter Brook will be celebrating his hundredth birthday in less than three years, but he still stages theater with his unmistakable signature.
His latest production has been playing since Thursday at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, which the London-born Parisian saved from demolition in 1974 and has since made it one of the top addresses in the European theater landscape.
"Tempest Project" is a typical late Brook work, half old master's finger exercise, half scenic ink drawing with more weight than many a monumental ham in oil.
With the help of the well-established translator and editor Marie-Hélène Estienne and Jean-Claude Carrière (who died after the start of rehearsals), Shakespeare's full-length "Storm" is evaporated into an eighty-minute breeze in a water glass, as mild and pure as a spray from the thermal water atomizer.
Prospero grabs his staff
An empty room, two benches on the left and two on the right, in between like flotsam on the floor four star-shaped logs, textiles, a book and a staff.
Prospero (Ery Nzaramba) seizes this when he enters the room to make a revolutionary revelation to his daughter Miranda (Paula Luna): She is a princess, he is the deposed king of Milan!
Both were pushed out to sea in a rickety boat by the helpers of Prospero's usurper brother, but "thanks to divine providence" were washed up on an island.
Twelve years after this unlawful expulsion, the little daughter has now grown into a marriageable beauty, the usurper drives past the island.
With the help of the air spirit Ariel, the magician Prospero lets him and his entourage shipwreck, albeit so gently that not even a drop of seawater wets their robes.
Here he is already peering in through the door, Marilú Marini's very favorite sylph: He smiles, he dances, his eyes sparkle, his hands flutter.
He is Prospero's slave at best in the distant original, in Brook/Estienne/Carrière the two form a well-established tandem, almost a couple, full of complicity, solidarity, even chaste affection.
The antipode of the air spirit Ariel is the earth tramp Caliban.
Sylvain Levitte plays the witch's son with a pouty mouth, sideways glances and animalistic gestures of defiance: like a turkey, he fluffs up the perforated felt poncho and, extremely irritated, kicks it out like a donkey.
The acting is charming and free of charades, but as a reading it is a bit trivial.
With the cronies Stephano and Trinculo, who embody the (real) twins Fabio and Luca Maniglio without caricaturing as bramar-based, bunny-hearted clown clones, the dumb devil roast finds two accomplices who completely predictably bring his planned assassination attempt on Prospero to failure.
What remains is the son of the king of Naples who was stranded with him: Ferdinand.
Also played by Levitte, he falls in love with Miranda at first sight - and vice versa.
After a "test" that consists of stacking the logs mentioned, he is allowed to marry his Dulzinea.
Prospero forgives all bad guys - happy ending.
Anyone who knows "The Tempest" will have been taken aback when reading these lines.
Where is the bad brother that Brook consistently banishes backstage (but inadvertently allows him to be mentioned several times)?
Where is the "honest old councillor", helper of the usurper, but secret savior of Prospero and Miranda?
And why are the shady king of Naples and his hellhound brother missing?
With these figures, the political dimension of a piece says goodbye, the central theme of which is power - "free" and "freedom" are key words in the text.
For many years Brook has sought to distil a kind of purity of theater.
The search for the purest form for him often involves shortening, simplifying, smoothing and leveling - especially with classics like "The Magic Flute", "Hamlet" or "The Tempest".
In the program note he calls the latter work Shakespeare's last - although science has long since refuted the romantic notion of the testamentary play in which the author speaks to his audience through Prospero's mouth.
The fact that the director, who has staged the work four times since 1957, seems to ignore fundamental research results is suspicious.
The storm is missing
In an essay, Günter Walch has listed the diverse approaches to interpretation that the piece has been subjected to over the years.
In addition to the autobiographical reading, “The Tempest was also read as a court satire, in which Prospero does not become Shakespeare but James I;
as a political piece with a rebellious Republican subtext;
as revenge drama;
as a play about the regeneration of power;
on the eternal theme of chaos and order;
as a pastoral drama with utopian evocation of the Golden Age;
as a romantic love story;
as a philosophical drama;
as a metaphysical metamorphosis poem;
as a colonial drama and psychoanalytic case piece of Prospero”.
Brook leaves it at the love story, garnished with burlesque interludes.
Significantly, his "Tempest Project" lacks Shakespeare's opening scene: the tempest.