Summary 
A fantastic outdoor scenic design highlights this production, which boasts a sexy ballet-dancer Ariel with wicked aerial moves and a burly green-bodied Caliban who shows flashes of poetic humanity. A rock-star Prospero and his farmer's daughter Miranda are supported by a comic flout-'em-and-scout-em sing-along with the audience after intermission, plus a slew of black-clad witches, red-eyed wolves' heads, and gigantic puppets that do not overshadow a atisfyingly emotional conclusion.
Design
Directed by Geoffrey Kent. Scenic design by Kent Homchick. Costume design by Claire Henkel. Lighting design by Shannon McKinney. Sound design by Jason Ducat. Aerial consultant Steven Cole Hughes.
Cast
Peter Simon Hilton (Prospero), Michael Winters (Gonzalo), Vanessa Morosco (Ariel), Rodney Lizcano (Trinculo), Sammie Jo Kinnett (Stephano), Scott Bellot (Antonio), Kyra Lindsey (Miranda), Chris Kendall (Alonso), Benjamin Bonenfant (Ferdinand), Joshua Archer (Caliban), David Bolus (Sebastian).
Analysis
Directed by Geoffrey Kent, a member of the acting ensemble for the 57th Colorado Shakespeare Festival, this outdoor production of The Tempest is exceptionally staged. The scenic design is a colorful cartoon of both a desert isle and a ship about to flounder, lost in, well, a tempest. A big wooden ship's wheel is mounted on a platform, flanked by steep steps, masts and rigging to either side, with billowing sails, coiled lengths of rope and cabin doors all clearly visible. Stage left is a little tepee-style hut decorated with sea shells, and amid a slew of storming sound effects - waves lashing, winds howling, thunder cracking - Prospero appears farther above in a makeshift balcony. This Prospero is a younger man, with long straight brown hair tied back like a rock star, wielding a crooked wooden staff and wearing a gold-flecked magical cape.
The 1.1 storm sequence is perhaps Kent's best-staged scene of the production, featuring brilliant lighting effects although the entire show is colorfully and creatively lit. Peter Simon Hilton's Prospero waves his staff and reacts as if the summoning of the storm is causing him a great deal of physical exertion and pain, and five of his spirits scurry about the stage in shades of blue and white. Two of the spirits move downstage, lifting and flapping a long sea-blue length of wispy-thin cloth to simulate the rolling waves of the ocean. The period sailors are British "redcoats" struggling with the rolling deck, a raging wind, and rainfall, and Kent stages the scene with ample detail: Gonzalo says "remember!" with a pirate-like rolling of his Rs, a redcoat doubles over and gets seasick in a big wooden bucket, and a sailor gets stuck in the rigging, dangling by one foot and waving his arms. When the wheel comes loose, the helmsman goes flying - "all is lost!" - and the men are wrapped in the blue cloth by the spirits in a figurative representation of their shipwreck and near-drowning.
Hilton's Prospero seems mentally anguished by the burden of the spell as well as physically spent. His first lines are amplified and echoey, an unsettling anachronism for a scene set on a remote 17th-century island. He groans as the bustling spirits remove the heavy cloak from his shoulders, and Miranda arrives 1.2, an earnest strawberry blonde in white pants and bare feet, a knife strapped to one thigh. She is played by Kyra Lindsey like a voluptuous farmer's daughter, aching for companionship, youthfully naïve, and wholesomely attractive. She drops obediently to one knee when commanded by her father, and the swarming spirits catch her gently as she literally falls asleep while standing up.
Vanessa Morosco's sexy Ariel, who watched the shipwreck while wrapped within a white sail, sings gently in her next appearance - "not a hair perished!" - wearing a form-fitting white-and-blue body suit, her bluish-white hair sculpted into a wave-like nautical spike. She is lithe like a dancer, memorably combining ballet-like dance moves and aerial-style poses, joining supermodel good-looks with a healthy splash from a pole-dancer's repertoire of leg kicks and body spins, athletic climbs and twirling falls. She is stunning to watch, dangling from a sail like an acrobatic trapeze artist, or poised high above in the balcony, watching and listening. She gasps for breath - "my liberty!" - at a reminder of her imprisonment by Sycorax, then disappears upstage with a whooshing sound effect as if moving at great speed.
Morosco's Ariel plays an amplified magical pipe 2.1, casting a sleeping spell on the scattered shipwreck survivors, who yawn and collapse. The men are aristocrats and soldiers, in redcoats with white tunics and black boots, Gonzalo in green trying to cheer the grief-stricken Alonso. Ariel saves them by waking them as the comically tip-toeing Antonio and Sebastian approach with rifle and pistol, then turn to pretend to fire their weapons at nearby lions. Later, in 3.3 the ragtag survivors arrive for a feast with Ariel watching while again wrapped in a shroud of sail. The spirits now seem akin to Macbeth's witches, clawed and clad in black robes, along with dark wigs and black boots.
Paralleling Ariel and the survivors is Caliban's interaction with the would-be assassins and drunkards, Stephano and Trinculo. Joshua Archer plays Caliban with a brutish physicality, muscling across the stage like a dangerous boxer, head down, eyes up, looking for trouble. He wears a green body-skin bumpy with boils and pustules, and he sports a big thick tail that drags behind him, split at the end like a fish, along with a purple hat, torn white shorts, and a short leash dangling from a chain at his neck. When he first arrives 1.2, he scuttles downstage and swings his tail out over the heads of the first row of the audience, and he constantly licks his lips with lascivious malevolence, especially when leering at Lindsey's comely Miranda.
Archer's muscular Caliban is less an evil force than an earthy brute. Archer's beast spills an armload of wooden kindling from the blue-lit balcony, then stumbles when rushing down the stairs to scramble after loose sticks of wood, sprawling at center stage. He glares at the front row, then confides to the audience, finally shushing them and hiding beneath a coat as the drunken Trinculo approaches. Trinculo provides amusing comic relief - "a man or a fish?" - hiding on top of Caliban but facing the other way, but Stephano is an absolute delight, slurping rum from a shoe - "here's my comfort" - while singing, weeping, drinking, and playing with the patrons in the front row. Sammie Jo Kinnett's Stephano leads the trio, giggling when Caliban licks his bare feet, and their rousing "Flout 'Em and Scout 'Em" song 3.2 becomes a memorable audience sing-along - they divide the audience into three sections for a volume competition - one audience member picked out for a mercifully quick singing solo. When Caliban passes out, he awakes shouting "flout 'em and scout 'em!" and Ariel appears above to engineer the "thou liest" trick, sparking a high-speed chase that quickly concludes in exhaustion as they all collapse and lie down. Ariel plays a tender melody as Archer's Caliban reveals a poetic spark of humanity: "when I waked I cried to dream again." Later, when they find fine clothing, the men are urged away by Caliban but ignore the monster, trying on various garments - Stephano puts on three hats at once - until Ariel conjures giant roaring wolves' heads with glowing red eyes and big yellow fangs to scare them away.
Benjamin Bonenfant portrays the romantic lead Ferdinand, arriving 1.2 to Ariel's music, wearing a blue naval officer's uniform. He is guided by three of the spirits to center stage then to Miranda - "I might call him a thing divine!" - and as Prospero notices: "at first sight they have changed eyes." He must shout for their attention, and two spirits swing Ferdinand by his arms when he draws his sword on Prospero. The young man is hauling lumber 3.2 in his shirtsleeves - a handsome contrast to the bumpy green Caliban - and Miranda brings him a cup of water, standing directly in front of him for an earnest, "do you love me?" In moments they are upon their knees together, promising marriage as Hilton's Prospero comes forward to bring intermission, and when the young lovers return giggling to the stage 4.1, Prospero gives his daughter to Ferdinand while Ariel plays a rapping rhyme. A gentle kiss becomes a passionate make-out session, and Prospero shouts so sternly the two leap away from each other: "no tongue!"
Kent utilizes colorful puppetry to attempt to evoke the magical atmosphere that helps produce Prospero's forgiveness. Visually striking, the enormous puppets - at offstage left, a goddess adorned with colorful scarves but with an enormous head and long distended arms - nonetheless slow the narrative to a halt. Three gigantic puppets are paraded, feeling more like an indulgence than eye-candy or a substantive addition to the story, one on each side of the stage and a third in blue on the elevated platform, and from the balcony Prospero seems to conduct the orchestral backing music. Hilton redeems the scene with his finest moments - "our revels are now ended" - as he fights back tears - "we are such stuff that dreams are made on" - although his anger ("I will plague them all") saddens Morosco's ethereal Ariel.
The conclusion comes with the spirits bringing Prospero his cloak and staff for 5.1 - "the rarer action is in virtue" - as Ariel rushes off to free the sailors: "this rough magic I here abjure." After he forgives his enemies, the spirits remove the cloak, and Hilton's wizard also surrenders his jacket and belt while Ariel sings "merrily merrily shall I live now." Hilton's Prospero embraces Alonso, witnesses a big smooch between Ferdinand and Miranda - "o brave new world!" - and sees his potential assassins Trinculo and Stephano brought in bound and driven to their knees: "I am not Stephano, but a cramp!" The island spirits are freed, Caliban standing tall and proud like a man with the magician's cloak over his shoulders, Ariel rushing gracefully upstage with the wooden staff. Hilton ends the production with a dramatic flourish - "now my charms are all o'erthrown" - conjuring a sparking flash of fire from his books.