An Irishman's Diary

To stage a play outdoors in Ireland is a major logistical challenge. You need to assemble most of the country's known reserves of optimism to start with. Then you need luck. But even if you have both of these, to stage a play called The Tempest outdoors in Ireland, well, that seems to be just asking for trouble.

Apart from anything else, the action as written by Shakespeare will have to compete with the drama that is the Irish summer, now in its record-breaking umpteenth year. Audiences everywhere are gripped by it, desperate to know how it will turn out in the end.

So never mind whether Prospero can use his magical powers to create a storm, thereby shipwrecking his evil brother Antonio an on island in the Adriatic, where he will show him the error of his ways. The real issue is whether anyone can hold off the Atlantic depression, forecast by Met Éireann, until the play is over. Now that would be impressive.

When the audience arrives in Fitzgerald's Park, Cork, to see Corcadorca theatre company's current production of The Tempest, the actors are already frozen into position in the middle of the pond. In a Mediterranean country the term "frozen", as used here, would be figurative. In Ireland, it's only half-figurative. The evening I was there, audience members nervously took their seats (on benches, walls, or on the grass) hoping they wouldn't become frozen into position too. Clouds, definitely not frozen into position, raced across the night sky, chased by a chill wind.

As Act 1, Scene 1 - the shipwreck - got under way, our attention was distracted by the inevitable latecomers. Both ducks, they flew in from the direction of Shandon and splashed down just to the side of the stage. I suppose this was their pond, but even so. The strong association of ducks with water only added to our unease, as those of us who had not brought raincoats checked the sky, yet again, to see how the story-line was developing.

The Tempest is Shakespeare's last play and one of only two he wrote with an original plot. It requires a certain suspension of disbelief: there are fairies and magic and an underlying theme of man's capacity for redemption. But if you can accept that a pond in Fitzgerald's Park, Cork is the Adriatic Sea, you're half-way there. And on both scores, your appreciation will probably be heightened by a good overcoat.

You're in experienced hands, at least, in that Corcadorca specialises in taking theatre out of the theatre. The company once turned St Patrick's Hill into Calvary - not a big transformation, admittedly - for a play about Jesus, and set another production in a garden centre. Even so, it takes a while for the magic to work. The Tempest's opening scene, with its sound effects of thunder and rain, shakes whatever confidence you had in the actual weather. And when later action requires the backing of a whistling wind, you find yourself looking at the speakers for reassurance that the sound effects are man-made.

The night I was there, Act 3 brought an alarming development: the ducks suddenly up and left. Had they heard something, we wondered, as they flew off in the direction from which they came? Overhead, an angry cloud entered stage right. The tension was now unbearable.

In the event, the cloud turned out to be a red herring that quickly disappeared. If the ducks had been disturbed by anything, it was probably the duck-like pretensions of the cast members, who were splashing in and out of the pond, as oblivious to the temperature as children in a heated swimming pool. Watching them, you didn't feel as cold as you had at the start. Meanwhile, the sky-based drama was resolving itself happily. It would not rain tonight.

In fact, as artistic director Pat Kiernan tried to assure me beforehand, it doesn't rain as much in Ireland as we think it does. At the time, I took this to be the ravings of a man who had been drinking the company's stocks of optimism. But he was probably right. In common with the Shakespeare who wrote The Tempest, we like to dramatise the weather. When I questioned Kiernan's sanity, he explained calmly that you only need a 90-minute "window" to stage an outdoor play, and most nights this is available.

It was available that night, anyway. By Act 4, the window was clear enough to see stars overhead, which meant air temperatures had dropped even further. No matter. The audience was now warmed by the combination of great drama and the certainty that it was only the actors who would be getting wet. We could relax and enjoy Prospero's famous speech:

The cloud-capp'd towers, the

gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great

globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall

dissolve

And, like this insubstantial

pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We

are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and

our little life

Is rounded with a sleep. . .

The transformation of Fitzgerald's Park was complete. Fairy-like insects flitted on the pond, taking their bow. The trees whispered applause. A balmy breeze - several degrees above zero - swept in across the Western Road, from the general direction of Africa.