Return To The Forbidden Planet
Return To The Forbidden Planet
Return to the Forbidden Planet is a Jukebox musical by director Bob Carlton based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and the 1950s science fiction film Forbidden Planet (which itself drew its plot loosely from The Tempest).
Return to the Forbidden Planet started life with the Bubble Theatre Company as a production for open-air performance in a tent. A revised version of the musical opened, indoors, at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool in the mid 1980s. It later moved to the Tricycle Theatre in London. After some rework a final version opened the Cambridge Theatre in London's West End in September 1989. It won the Olivier Award for best musical for both 1989 and 1990.
The plot follows the crew of a routine survey flight under the command of Captain Tempest. Their spaceship is drawn mysteriously to the planet D'Illyria where mad scientist Doctor Prospero and his lovely daughter Miranda are marooned.
Return To The Forbidden Planet
The high energy show features a bevy of 1950s and 1960s rock and roll classics, performed on stage by the cast. The campy sci-fi setting consists of silvered space suit costumes and space ship sets concealing keyboards and drums. The robot, Ariel, is performed by an actor on roller skates, with a costume reminiscent of the original movie's Robby the Robot. The show's dialogue is largely adapted from well-known passages from Shakespeare. There is a part for narrator on pre-recorded video which was played in the original production by Magnus Pyke and in the London production by the noted astronomer and TV personality Sir Patrick Moore. A cast album was released in 1990 by Virgin Records.
When the musical opened in Sydney, Australia, the beginning of a national tour, the pre-recorded narrator was Clive "Robbo" Robertson, who performed a futuristic parody of his own late-night TV news show, "Newsworld". A cast album was released in 1991 by ATA Records.
On September 27, 1991, an off-Broadway production opened at in New York at the Variety Arts Theatre, a former nickelodeon and pornographic movie theatre. Return to the Forbidden Planet was the first theatrical production in the new venue. A notable cast member was Julee Cruise, known to audiences from her role in Twin Peaks. The pre-recorded narrator was James Doohan, famous as "Scotty" from Star Trek. It played to mixed reviews, but was nominated for two Outer Critics Circle Awards. It closed on April 26, 1992 after 243 performances. A cast album was released in 1991 by Rhino Records.
The show was revived for touring productions in the United Kingdom in 1999, 2001 and 2002, featuring guest narration from Sir Patrick Moore. A new production toured the UK in 2006 with the pre-recorded narrator being the astrophysicist and virtuoso guitarist from Queen, Brian May.
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, estimated to have been written in 1610-11, (although some researchers have argued for an earlier dating). The play's protagonist is the banished sorcerer Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, who initially uses his magical powers to punish his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore. The entire play takes place on an island under his control whose native inhabitants, Ariel and Caliban, respectively aid or hinder his work. While listed as a comedy when it was initially published in the First Folio of 1623, many modern editors have since re-labeled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances.
No obvious single source has been found from which Shakespeare may have derived his plot. However, the play does seem to draw on several then-contemporary accounts of shipwrecks in the New World, as well as the works of Michel de Montaigne and Ovid's Metamorphoses. The play's basic structure reflects that of the then-popular Italian commedia dell'arte. It is one of two Shakespearean plays which follow the neoclassical three unities (the other is The Comedy of Errors). Around the 1950s and 60s, The Tempest attracted much attention from post-colonial critics for its portrayal of Ariel's and Caliban's reactions to foreign control of their island.