Tempest reimagined in twisted modern setting

Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed is complicated and satisfying. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Margaret Atwood. PHOTO: SUPPLIED

Jessie Neilson finds Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed both complicated and satisfying.

HAG-SEED
Margaret Atwood
Penguin Random House

By JESSIE NEILSON

Shakespeare's The Tempest, lush in its magical realism, wild and tempestuous storms and conniving tricksters, tells of young Miranda and her father, wizard Prospero, marooned since many years back on a remote island. Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, had been usurped by his brother Antonio. The latter, with his cohorts, is upon a ship on black seas, and so, with the aid of wispy spirit Ariel, Prospero spins up a storm, causing this shipload of former merrymakers to wash ashore.

Also inhabiting the island is the "savage and deformed slave'' Caliban, trying to earn his freedom from master Prospero, who sees now his chance for revenge on Antonio and company.

Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed is her revisionist take on The Tempest; a chance for this huge literary force to give her take on this play as part of the new Hogarth Shakespeare series. And she grabs the opportunity gleefully.

She sets her modern-day Tempest in a prison, where male inmates are enrolled in a theatre course as part of an "improvement'' initiative, under the tutelage of Felix (Prospero). Theatre director Felix, previously head of the heralded Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, has had his position taken by his right-hand man and is in the mood for revenge. Felix had a daughter, Miranda, and although she was lost years ago he keeps her presence in his daily life.

Like The Tempest, Hag-Seed follows this structure with five acts and an epilogue, and adds a prologue as well. The prologue is striking: like the opening scene of The Tempest it throws the reader right into the excitement. Thus Atwood sets up the reader's anticipation for what type of revenge scene might occur much further down the track, plotting the course through several key dates as the prisoners work towards putting on their own, interactive rendition of The Tempest. Though initially sceptical towards a play with fairies and spirits, Felix quickly woos his company.

Given its modern-day setting, Atwood has gone all out with her contemporary vernacular. As the prisoners/cast put together their scenes, dialogue and monologues, they employ language which is familiar and suits them. The prisoner taking on Caliban (Hag-Seed) owns his language, which is pretty much excruciating: "My name's Caliban, got scales and long nails,/I smell like a fish and not like a man - / But my other name's Hag-Seed, or that's what he call me;/ He call me a poison ... / But I'm Hag-Seed!''

Atwood's plot, like the original version, is complex, with wonderful twists. Felix is a delightfully grouchy and egocentric protagonist, with his contempt for usurper Tony expressed in such terms as: "that self-promoting, posturing little shit ... It rankles and festers. It brews vengefulness.'' Shakespearean conceits thus are threaded through his thoughts. Felix's plays had always been in appallingly bad taste, with no limits to his propensity to offend his viewers. He aimed to "raise the bar as high as the moon'', planning for Ariel to be acted by a transvestite on stilts, who would then transform into a giant firefly.

Atwood's Hag-Seed is complicated and satisfying. The revenge scene plays out in such a fashion that it would be worth digesting it several times. The only criticism would be this scene does not signal the finale. The post-play lives of Ariel, Miranda and company as envisaged by the prisoners (Act Five) seem a let-down.

However, Atwood has thoroughly worked the original inside out and her pleasure in doing so pours off every page. Felix aimed to "twist reality until it twangled'' and Atwood, controlling his hand, certainly has achieved just that.

Jessie Neilson is a University of Otago library assistant.

Comments

Piggybacking on long-proved greatness is a sign of a decadent mind. In fiction stories the truly creative imagination, having infinite original choices, has no need to borrow/steal from others.