After playing host to outside companies and productions at its upstairs venue, the Park Bar Theater now introduces its own producing company and marks the grand opening with a classic take on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Project mastermind, entrepreneur, and venue owner Jerry Belanger also directs the inaugural production, the result of large-scale work and investment that showcases the potential of the space, although its finest achievements of mirth and wonder prove transient rather than continuous.
Now extensively remodeled, the theater represents a Detroit-style makeover of a repurposed raw space: rough walls and exposed conduits are starkly contradicted by a unique teardrop-shaped bar, hardwood floors, and comfortable graduated seating. Any doubts about the technical credentials of the theater are dispersed by sound designers Mikey Brown and Joe Kvoriak’s first cinematically glorious thunderclap and lighting designer Michael Rollo’s inundating lightning. The initial scene throws the audience into the tempest with the passengers and crew of a ship, which founders and casts its inhabitants into the brine — an ingenious set detail by designers Belanger and Rollo helps communicate the mayhem and desperation of tumult at sea that is so difficult to transport to the stage. Unbeknownst to the ship’s inhabitants, who wash up on an island apparently devoid of civilization, this storm was far from a random vagary of the weather. Rather, it was intentionally conjured by the banished duke Prospero (Pat Loos), who has raised daughter Miranda (Katie Terpstra) in seclusion on the island for more than a decade, carefully plotting revenge on his usurpers that is now coming to fruition.
Click to read more ...
March 21, 2013