E-Mail This Article to a Friend Storm troupers BTW and Jonathan Epstein ride The Tempest BY SALLY CRAGIN

The last time Jonathan Epstein performed in The Tempest was 15 years ago, for Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. Just as the play is riddled with improbable accidents and surprise departures, so too was that production. Keanu Reeves played Trinculo, but, Epstein recalls, "he kept crashing his motorcycle." Andre Gregory was Prospero (and his daughter, Marina, played Prospero’s daughter, Miranda) but had to depart when his wife became ill.

But there were comic moments, as when Reeves, "a natural clown," was on stage. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure had just been released, so flocks of teenage girls filled the audience. "There’s this one line where Stephano says, ‘How do you like our plot, Trinculo?’, and he says, ‘Excellent,’ which pretty much stopped the show," explains Epstein. "It usually doesn’t," he deadpans.

The veteran S&C actor will star in a new production of The Tempest by Boston Theatre Works beginning next week. So far, it’s been smooth sailing for this one, aside from a forced move from the Tremont Theatre to the Cyclorama, where it opens next Thursday.

The play is Shakespeare’s valedictory, a drama about a usurped duke and shipwrecked father, the magical Prospero, who when Fate brings his enemies to the island maroons them by way of a storm. Epstein finds the character both complex and maddening. "Prospero certainly talks a lot, and what he says I find very moving." Prospero is also "very concerned about fairness and justice, yet he’s unbelievably manipulative. It takes him five acts to get over being manipulative."

For director Jason Slavick, "The Tempest is like a well, entirely defined in scope but its depth is unfathomable. It speaks of a writer who had an extraordinary understanding of humanity." Epstein adds that the themes of betrayal that animate the play come "from all different angles." He continues, "It’s very easy to imagine a Shakespeare at that time for whom betrayal was a real subject. He’s presumably left or about to leave the company he’s been with for a long time. His boyhood love poems — the Sonnets — have just been published, which has to be embarrassing. He’s back in his home town or about to move back. You don’t want to draw too much because you distract yourself from the play."

And from the "reluctant sadist" at its center, as Epstein describes Prospero. "How can you keep the audience from being appalled at his story?. He’s someone who, when he had the power, didn’t do anything with it. But once he gets shipwrecked on an island with his daughter, he does everything he can to get power, but then he gives it away and is much happier."

Slavick adds, "When we were talking about doing this play a year ago, the only other thing we were talking about was the war in Iraq and how America plays out its own power in the world." The director notes that events in the play mirror aspects of recent US history. "We spend the first very long scene showing that Prospero has been wronged and he has every right to exact revenge, and to me the journey of the play is, ‘Will he or won’t he?’ "

And casting Epstein, a noted Shakespearean actor and scholar as well as a two-time Elliot Norton Award winner, was one way to keep the magician complicated. "If Prospero’s all nice and cuddly, there’s no dramatic action," says Slavick. "But if you have an extremely powerful person who’s been harmed, the question is, ‘What will he do with that power?’ "

The Tempest is presented by Boston Theatre Works at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in the South End, January 13 through February 13. Tickets are $20 to $32; call (617) 931-ARTS, or visit www.ticketmaster.com