Fringe Review: Kaliban escapes The Tempest for a new life

Calgary Herald

4 days ago

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Stage 7, Yardbird Suite, 11 Tommy Banks Way
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What happens to our favourite characters after the play is over? More importantly, what happens to the lesser-known, obscure characters after the curtain drops?
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Kaliban, for those who don't remember, was the half-man, half-beast who inhabited the island of Shakespeare's The Tempest. He becomes the servant of Prospero, former Duke of Milan, though is abandoned on the island when Prosperous escapes and regains his title. And he's getting his own story told, finally, in Kaliban.
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Kaliban wasn't murdered, wasn't left on a sinking island, wasn't abandoned to some horrible fate; surely he survived and possibly thrived? Andrew Hamilton's show Kaliban imagines the life of the brute after the events of The Tempest, our protagonist striving for a more fulfilling life for himself.
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He flees the island to join human society, struggling at first but slowly getting the hang of it. He becomes Kaliban the warrior, Kaliban the lover, Kaliban the despot, Kaliban the destroyer of worlds.
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Hamilton does most of the show in iambic pentameter, or at least a close approximation, bringing life to an otherwise flat character. He dovetails into regular English when he's making a specific point or a strong argument, but the majority is the Shakespearean special.
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