REVIEW: The Tempest Gets Telemarketing Treatment in Spirits to Enforce

When it was suggested that cuts to arts funding could financially support Britain’s World War II effort, it’s alleged that Winston Churchill rebuffed, “Then what would we be fighting for?”

A great, if utterly unsubstantiated story, that warms the hearts of artists everywhere. After all, what is the world without the arts and by necessity, money to fund its creation? If only those in power felt this importance and acted accordingly.

Unfortunately, any artist who’s scraped tooth and nail to fund a production knows that few of those in power are willing to open the coffers.

Spoofing this reality is no doubt the seed in Mickle Maher‘s one-act play, Spirits to Enforce, now receiving a robust production at Catastrophic Theatre. But like all Maher’s work, the seed of the play unfolds and blooms into something else entirely onstage, resulting in deliciously ludicrous double-meaning and wildly imaginative conceit.

Twelve superheroes have decided to mount and star in a production of Shakespeare’s mystical masterpiece, The Tempest. But who’s going to pay for it? Why, donors of course, or so they hope.

Set entirely at a phone bank on a submerged submarine, the superhero-telemarketer/fundraisers, disguised as their undercover personas, ring up a slew of stingy prospects. In quirky fits and starts befitting the odd characters they all are, each explains The Tempest’s premise and their desperate need for funds.

But never mind the play, who is fighting crime and making sure the evil Professor Cannibal isn’t terrorizing the town, the prospects want to know. Despite assurances that the superheroes have locked him up for good this time, it becomes apparent that Cannibal has escaped while the superheroes lose days and possibly weeks to their no-avail campaign.

Enter The Tempest epilogue as imagined by Maher.

The title of the show comes from Prospero’s final lines in The Tempest as he leaves his island and sets sail for home. “Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant, And my ending is despair, Unless I be relieved by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself and frees all faults.”

Decades later Maher posits that those spirits are still hanging in, sunk underwater, and taking on superhero status. Did Prospero and the gang not sail home safely as Shakespeare would have us believe? Cannibal does sound a lot like the half-man-half monster Caliban left behind to create a fiefdom on his own, banishing the island spirits.

If you are Tempest fans, this, and many other nods, including moments of original text, will tickle your fancy, as Maher intends.

Know not of the Shakespearean tale? Fear not, Maher’s play does give a synopsis of the play that fills in the blanks enough to follow along and enjoy the humor for what it is as opposed to what it represents.
Things become simultaneously clearer yet wackier when, out of desperation, the superheroes decide to reveal their true powers during calls. Surely that truth will raise some funds.

Don’t expect anything obvious like flying or being invisible, this is Maher after all, and he doesn’t disappoint. The reveals are genius in their oddness, wonderfully allowing characters to grab their freak flag and wave it proudly.

Plot-wise, these reveals also allow Maher to lean into The Tempest fully, even giving us spritely Ariel as a narrator of sorts. Are we still watching a play about arts funding? Has it morphed into a show poking fun at Shakespeare’s work itself as illustrated by a superhero gleefully asserting that what makes The Tempest so wonderful “is that the play is just barely there.”

As the group starts to discuss the rehearsal process on their phone calls, it’s fair to say we’re watching a play skewering the theater process itself with all its pretentions, rituals and self-importance.

“The audience will sit on the crest of a wave,” one of the superheroes says on the phone. The whole thing will be improvised, says another. The most appropriate time for intoxication is in the rehearsal room, asserts a different superhero.

It’s all ridiculous, meta, absurd, punny, referential, poetic and wicked smart. But at just under two hours it recalls the words of another Shakespearean character, Polonius, who declares that a crucial part of Hamlet’s play within the play is “too long.”

Maher’s cleverness here is a bit of a runaway train. Always exciting in the bumps and jolts, but exhaustion from holding on sets in before the play is done with us. It’s easy to forgive as Maher keeps hooking us in with new gags and ramped-up quirkiness, but a haircut of just 20 or so minutes off the production is needed to keep things completely fresh.

Lucky for us we have Director Jason Nodler steering the symphonic ship of Maher’s words and ideas. This is a true ensemble effort, one that necessitates stagnant time at a table making calls. Yet Nodler, with a big assist from Lighting Designer, Hudson Davis, makes the production look dynamic on all fronts.

More importantly, Nodler choreographs his charismatic cast with precision and plenty of room to shine.

If you’ve ever seen a Catastrophic show before you’ll know many of the actors. These are big personalities/talents one and all. Noel Bowers, Raymond Compton, Tamarie Cooper, Jovan Jackson, Bryan Kaplún, Jenna Morris-Miller, Karina Pal Montaño-Bowers, Rebecca Randall, Kyle Sturdivant, Clarity Welch, Abraham Zeus Zapata and Walt Zipprian.

Each one a mini play/character study unto themselves and a joy to watch. Hilarious, no question. But also incredibly sad as they struggle in their soulless world, without art or magic, where they need to beg for creativity to shine. Yet hopeful as they endlessly plug along.

See how Maher brings us back to the artistic endeavor in opposition to those who would dismiss it?

Spirits, superheroes, Shakespeare, villains, apathetic audiences, theater prigs, theater naysayers, actors with confidence, self-doubting artists, and just a bucket full of weird. Now that’s a synopsis Maher might approve of.

Spirits to Enforce continues through October 12 at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston, 3400 Main. For more information, call 713-521-4533 or visit matchouston.org. Pay-What-You-Can!