by AMY BARRATT

Shakespeare. You had to read him in high school. You know he's a genius because everybody says so, but you never really "got" him. If we're honest, this is where a lot of us are with the Bard, including a lot of people who work in the theatre.

Madd Harold knows that if you have an aversion to Shakespearean drama, it's because you've had it shoved down your throat. But as an actor and director, Harold has tasted the joys of Shakespeare performance and is bound and determined to share them with you. The Gravy Bath artistic director will try almost anything to get you into the theatre, like setting The Tempest in an insane asylum, or Henry V during the October Crisis. Harold has done both, and the latter in particular was a critical and commercial success.

But now, as he embarks on his first "mainstage" production at the Saidye - yet another Tempest - he seems almost ready to disown that earlier work. "The spin we put on it was too heavy-handed," says the soft-spoken director of the earlier production. "This is the true Tempest. It's not spun or pushed."

Working in a subscription house for the first time means that Harold doesn't have to think so much like a carnival barker to fill seats. To some extent, at least, if he builds it, they will come. But the lack of "spin" is less about Harold catering to the mainstream than it is about following his true instincts.

Back when he was preparing his first, concept-heavy Tempest, the director confided that he didn't really believe in "concept" Shakespeare. And as the author of The Actor's Guide to Performing Shakespeare, he argues that Shakespeare gives you everything you need in the text itself.

Veteran actor Douglas Campbell, who plays Gonzalo, agrees. "Even when concepts work, at some point the text will explode out of it and show the limitations of the concept. Give Shakespeare a stage and some good actors, and that's all he needs."

Eclectic ensemble

The Saidye's production has those bases covered and then some. The tri-generational cast includes people in their 20s like Yann Bernaquez, graduating from Gravy Bath to Equity wages; actors in mid-career like Gareth Armstrong, who plays Prospero (he will be familiar to audiences who saw Shylock at the Saidye in 2003); and elder statesman Campbell, working on his fourth Tempest in a career that includes an intimate involvement with the Stratford Festival. The cast also includes Gareth Potter, a Gravy Bath alumnus turned Stratford actor who provides a link between Harold's two Tempests: he has played Ferdinand in both. Last time, his Miranda was played by a guy in a blue johnnyshirt. This time, he is pleased to be working opposite the lovely Moya O'Connell.

Rising star Tristan D. Lalla (most recently seen in Saidye's Man of La Mancha and Repercussion's Midsummer Night's Dream) plays Caliban. This is the second time that Harold has cast a black actor in the role, and it's no accident. "It's in the script," Harold explains. "Prospero says, ‘Your mother was from Algiers.' He should be Arab or African. It's also a way of playing up the colonial themes in the play. Caliban represents the flesh, the physical need to be free."

In speaking with Harold I wondered if it was intimidating for him to be directing a war-horse like Campbell who, by his own admission, is "older than all of them put together, practically." I got the sense that the two of them had worked something out.

"He's a very interesting guy," says the 31-year-old director. "He has very strong ideas, and they're all good and valid."

For his part, Campbell says, "Madd needs a firm hand like me to say, ‘You've got to do this to get that.' He's not uptight about having someone say those things."

"The best thing," says Harold, "is to see him work with the young actors."

Both men believe in questioning authority, and neither is very keen on the baby boomer generation. (Don't mention George W. Bush to Campbell unless you're prepared to hear a convincing and depressing argument that we're headed into a new Dark Age.)

If there is any tension being played out in the Jean-Talon Street rehearsal space - reached by navigating a hallway described by Campbell as "Kafkaesque" - it seems it's a creative one.

The Tempest to Dec. 6 at the Saidye
(5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine), 739-7944, $18-$40

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