Horsham’s HAODS bring Shakespeare’s The Tempest to the stage

The challenges are both off-stage and on as Horsham’s HAODS offer a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Performances will be at Barns Green Village Hall, RH13 0PT from Wednesday, May 27-Saturday, May 30. Tickets from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/haods/2005746

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the society’s trustees are looking for new premises for the group for later this year when they have to move out of their current premises in Southwater.

There is uncertainty, but Yvonne Chadwell, who will be directing The Tempest, knows from long experience that HAODS is a company that always finds a way.

“I am hopeful that we will be fine. We have been going for a long time. What we would love to have is the optimal solution of premises where we can all be together, but if we can't find that I'm sure we will still be able to do things but we will just have to do them in a different way.

“We are in an office building in Southwater at the moment but we're going to have to move out because they are going to refurbish the whole place. Our lease is until October.

“The trustees have actually been looking since we moved in, looking for somewhere we could either lease or somewhere we could buy, but if we did buy it would have to be crowdfunded. But until we have got a place that we think we might be able to do something with, there is not very much we can do to formalise it. But fingers crossed. The trustees are looking hard.”

As for The Tempest, as Yvonne says: “It is something a little bit different for us, but it is still part of Shakespeare's comedy grouping as opposed to his tragedies. And it reflects humanity that was the same back in Shakespeare's time as it is today. It covers slavery and colonialism but it's also about love and redemption and about revenge. And there is humour.

“There is a love triangle and there is comedy based around Caliban, the human slave. And one of the twists is the relationship between Prospero and Ariel. They need each other. But one of the reflections we're dealing with is what happens at the end. At the end of the play Prospero asks for forgiveness. But what happens? Does he leave Ariel?”

The point is that it is a challenge for all concerned: “We have done Romeo & Juliet and we have done A Midsummer Night's Dream. And I have done Much Ado in a previous life. I wanted to challenge myself and to challenge our cast not just to step into the shoes of standard Shakespeare comedy. With The Tempest you might think that some of it is quite heavy but my challenge is to look at that and to help the actors find a form of language for the modern era which is still absolutely authentic to the original.

“It is one of those plays that has lots of quotes that people know such as ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep’ and ‘Our revels now are ended. These our actors as i foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air’ – quotes that people will know without necessarily knowing where they come from.”