Writer: Caroline Lezny
Director: Chloe Cattin
Of all of Shakespeare’s characters, the relationship between Miranda and Caliban is one of the least well served; The Tempest dismisses their connection as one solely based on his violence and her pure naïveté. Caroline Lezny expands on their relationship in new play We Wild Things, borrowing liberally from The Tempest but creating a stand-alone story that runs on two parallel tracks divided by time. Staged at the Old Red Lion Pub and Playhouse as part of the Camden Fringe, the sensitivity and sense of equality between the two characters is well developed, although the plot gets a little lost in its liberally dry-iced staging.
A decade after they parted badly, the now successful Mira returns to the beautiful paradise island where she was once shipwrecked, hoping to retrieve an important book she left behind. There she meets Cal again, the only native and the first man she ever came across and who has changed the island considerably in her absence. As their memories flood back in, Cal and Mira find themselves back at the same dividing point.
Lezny’s play is quite strong in its world creation, taking these individuals beyond their 17th-century inspiration to create a new backstory for them and then imagine what happened to them once Mira leaves the island. Here the notion is that the young book-learned Mira is taken into a women’s commune presumably to protect her from the violence of men, but both in the flashbacks and present-day sections, she craves freedom from society’s proscriptions. Cal is more than a slave but a practical man who tends the island harmoniously with its natural forces, swapping knowledge with Mira but absorbing too much of her external notions of power, control, kingship and ownership that cause harm in the intervening years.
The two tracks of the story blend well, denoted often by a short breath or blackout, building an innocent relationship that becomes muddied by their mutual inexperience and – like its source material – by Cal’s inability to control his animal and possessive nature. But the play runs on far longer than advertised, starting to feel repetitive as it searches for two satisfactory endings and getting a bit ground down in climate change. The result is that Mira, in particular, seesaws between liking and loathing Cal, pushing him away and returning to his company in both eras, while there are a few too many conversations about the beauty of the place that don’t move the story along.
The audience struggles a little to keep the timelines and shifting motivations in play, not helped by the excessively hot conditions in the Old Red Lion Pub and Playhouse. The A/C units here earlier in the month have vanished. These are things the company cannot help, but in response director Chloe Cattin could make alternative decisions to aid audience comfort and cast working, conditions including reducing the excessive smoke effects that accompany every scene drying the space further, starting on time so people are not waiting even longer in hot rooms and updating the advertised 75-minute running time to 85-minutes so attendees and performers can ensure they have enough water. Adapting to the needs of the space is a creative decision.
Performers Kathryn Snowe and Ulysses Wells deliver strong, likeable and insightful performances while Lezny’s work is filled with themes about control of self in both isolated and heavily governed locations, the questions of what a man is, and the different ways that vulnerability is exploited. The dialogue and structure could be sharpened, but this response to The Tempest gives these characters far greater life than Shakespeare allowed them.
Runs until 25 August 2026
Camden Fringe 2026 runs until 30 August
