William Shakespeare stuffed "The Tempest" with memorable words and phrases that hadn't been published before. "Fair play" and "foul play," "Into thin air" and "sea change" are among the coinages from the play that have become lodged in everyday speech.
He also dotted the play with references to something future theater troupes would need to provide themselves — music.
"I'm very drawn to how music is used within Shakespeare. Shakespeare is very musical. I'm always trying to find the soundtrack of a show," said Rick Dildine, who directs the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival production of "The Tempest" now performing at Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park through June 21.
Shakespeare often included song lyrics in his plays but added little about what the music should sound like. Yet music helps drive the plot of "The Tempest" — a story of revenge and redemption that takes place on a mysterious island haunted by sounds from unknown sources.
The island is "full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not," one character explains. "Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears." The magician behind the music uses it to lead his captives around the island.
This production leans into that context, with live music in the realm of folksy Americana and sea chanteys.
"It's as if Prospero has summoned all of music and shipwrecked it on this island. So when you come in, you're going to see a grand piano has been washed up on shore. There are other little musical instruments that are sprinkled on the shore. And once these people get on the island, it's like somehow magically they can play music," Dildine said.
The play is the final one that Shakespeare wrote on his own — he collaborated with other writers for two more — and is often interpreted as his farewell to theater. It centers on the powerful magician Prospero, whose younger brother deposed him as the Duke of Milan years before and exiled him and his young daughter.
Prospero uses his powers to shipwreck his brother's boat onto the island where he commands a fleet of otherworldly spirits, planning to kill the usurper and install his daughter as Milan's new leader. In a flourish of Shakespearean irony, it takes a plea from one of those supernatural servants to make Prospero realize that in winning his vengeance he could lose his humanity.
"People are complex and people are harsh, and out of their woundedness and out of their feelings of injustice, they reenact those things upon other people," said Nancy Bell, who plays Prospero. "That's what people do. And it's the challenge of a lifetime to overcome that."
"The Tempest" is Dildine's first production for St. Louis Shakespeare Festival since he left his post as the company's executive and artistic director in 2017, and the St. Louis troupe's first mainstage production of the play since 2005.
"I feel incredibly lucky and honored that Tom Ridgely invited me back," Dildine said of the company's current artistic director. "It's special to be thought of in that way and to continue to create at a place that I consider one of my artistic homes."
The show carries over many production elements from a version Dildine directed as artistic director of Alabama Shakespeare Company in 2023. (He is now artistic director of Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis.) The lead designers have reprised their roles for the St. Louis production: Christopher and Justin Swader (scenic design), Melanie Chen Cole (sound), Jeff Behm (lighting), Kathleen Geldard (costumes) and Paul Dennhardt, the fight and movement choreographer.
One conspicuous change is the addition of a small, second stage placed in the seating area where the company will dramatize something only briefly referenced in the play text: The traveling party that gets shipwrecked was on its way home from a wedding in Tunisia.
A song-filled preshow performed from the satellite stage represents a rowdy wedding reception, before the action segues into the shipwreck sequence that opens the play proper. Although the posted curtain time for all performances is 8:15 p.m., showgoers who wish to catch the full preshow will want to be in their seats or on their blankets by 8 p.m.
"We will start the preshow wandering through the audience," said Michael Grieve, the show's music director and an actor-musician who performs onstage throughout. "It's super interactive, and we're right there with you. We are welcoming the audience to the show. We're looking them in the eye and saying: You are here at this wedding reception."
It's an upbeat opening that suits the fast-paced, tuneful production, which runs just 90 minutes with no intermission.
"The Tempest" combines elements of tragedy and comedy — scholars categorize it, along with a handful of Shakespeare's other late plays that feature dramatic transformations and an echo of fairy tale logic, as a romance. The term refers to the literary movement that developed after Shakespeare's death, which favored unlikely and fantastic turns of events rather than realistic ones.
When Prospero contemplates giving up magic and forgoing his precious books of spells — "I shall drown my book" — the moment resonates with theatergoers hearing the play as the author's farewell.
The play offers the suggestion that righteous rage may do well to fuel our labors, but perhaps forgiveness is the sweetest song of all.
Copyright 2026 St. Louis Public Radio
