These our actors,
. . . were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
. . . shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wrack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on . . . .

When have these famous lines from the magician Prospero's great valedictory speech in Shakespeare's "The Tempest" ever had quite the feeling they do in "La Tempête," the version by Montreal's 4D Art that opened a two-night visit at the Byham last night?

	'La Tempete' Where: Pittsburgh Cultural Trust presents 4D Art at the Byham Theater. When: Sat. 8 p.m. Tickets: $$20.50-$32.50 at Box Office at Theater Square, www.pgharts.org or 412-456-6666.

"La Tempête," you see, is acted by four actors who appear in flesh-and-blood and six who appear only in hologram images, and both real and virtual actors are swirled about with visual hologram magic, as well. So it is truly a vision that Prospero brings before us, a literally "insubstantial" pageant that really does fade away, leaving some of the sweet melancholy of a dream.

As a technical experiment that presents moments of strange beauty and doubtless foretells more intricate stage effects in the years ahead, "La Tempete" has much to recommend it. But it leaves much to be desired. I recommend it to Shakespeare aficionados who already know the play and to techno-fanatics who want to glimpse the future, but I worry that it gives a very truncated view of Shakespeare's play.

The basic plan, as described more fully in a Post-Gazette preview, is to have Prospero, his daughter Miranda, his servants Ariel and Caliban and Miranda's suitor Ferdinand, all played by real actors. That's just four actors -- one, a woman, plays both Ariel and Caliban (with mixed results), and Ferdinand starts out as a hologram, becoming real only when Miranda professes to love him.

The inhabitants of the ship which Prospero brings within his power are limited to the King of Naples, the King's brother, Prospero's usurping brother, the good old Gonzalo and the two clowns, Stephano and Trinculo. These are played by six virtual actors and appear only as projected holograms.

The medium really is the message, to adapt the aphorism of another Canadian. And the message is clear: these fugitives from the bad old world (mistakenly perceived by Miranda as examples of a "brave new world") are the products of Prospero's art, not just in the way that they are all products of Shakespeare's art, but in that it is Prospero's fixation on these that brings them to life in this play.

To do "La Tempête" credit, it does zero in very persistently on an important, central theme. The hologram figures are so fully in Prospero's power that the play's only possible conflict is within him, as he gradually decides that the better part of virtue is forgiveness.

That's clear enough. But it is also a shade theoretical. And I wonder how available it is to an audience struggling to understand the compressed plot?

The dialogue, by the way, is in French, with projected surtitles translating it back into Shakespeare's English, though not all of it is translated, presumably so the surtitles can more easily keep pace. Oddly, the "translation" leaves a few words that any English-speaking producers would alter, e.g. "flote" (for flood) and "Argier" (for Algiers).

The majority of the spoken language falls to Richard Thériault as Prospero (in French, Prospéro), who has a magnificent voice and an oratorical command reminiscent of British heavyweights like Gielgud or Burton. But I suspect to non-French speakers, the result is to distance the text, perhaps as much because it sounds so beautiful as that it is declaimed. "La Tempête" can seem as formal as an opera with spoken arias.

The good side of that is the accompanying music, or should I say score, which provides momentum as well as emotional context. The bad side is that the acting can be very static, with the actors leaving movement to the swirling images.

This is accentuated by the technology, which requires the live actors to react to an empty space wherein we see a hologram but they cannot. And even if they could, the virtual actors are recorded, so there can be little of what we most cherish in live theater, its aliveness, with actors reacting to each other in real time and space.

As I have said, the technology can be beautiful. I especially like the way the real characters materialize out of a projection or fade into it. But eventually you welcome a moment when the real Miranda and Ferdinand move downstage to admire each other and there is nothing between their emotion and our enjoyment.

The technology can result in absurdities or elisions. The holograms always seem to be visions, never with the apparent substance of people: virtual stays virtual, at best. So how can Miranda fall in love with Ferdinand when she sees him as a blob of ectoplasm, clearly a product of Prospero's art? We just have to assume she does, and fortunately that's supported by his eventual materialization.

Cruxes in the play are lost. Virtual Trinculo, for example, can hardly hide under real Caliban's cape as the text requires. The comics are severely limited, since as holograms they cannot play off audience response. The revelation scene is limited because the King and others are not really there to enjoy it (ideally, they should all be redeemed into reality, too, but that would necessitate tripling the cast).

For some reason, Miranda and Ferdinand do not appear playing chess, a favorite moment of mine -- so what does "you play me false" mean without the game? And I imagine it has something to do with the limitations of virtualization (?) that Prospero's famous line about Caliban is cut -- "this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine."

Or maybe that cut comes from the decision to have one actor play both Ariel and Caliban. Since Manon Brunelle does not significantly change her garb or manner, the two never really register as separate characters. Instead, Ariel/Caliban seems one creature with a dual personality, which is thematically suggestive but confusing on stage and rather nonsensical in the story.

Much of the show's pleasure is visual. The set is an island that seems made of books (Prospero's famous library), and it is beautifully lit, often with sidelight directly on the actors, sometimes with everything suffused with warm light.

As a miraculous fable, "The Tempest" is a play that people love to reinvent. I just saw Patrick Stewart play Prospero in London in an Inuit "Tempest," and the previous time I saw him do it, in New York, it was Afro-Caribbean. Think, too, of Peter Greenaway's extraordinary film, with the entire text spoken by Gielgud's Prospero.

Such reinvention can open new doors. When Thériault delivered the epilogue, I was bewildered: still declaiming, he did not speak to the audience, asking to be set free, but seemed to be speaking to some other force -- God, the playwright, Ariel or himself. But I have just gone back to read that speech, and in the context of "La Tempête's" emphasis on Prospero's personal redemption, it becomes far more complex than a simple plea for our applause:

Now . . . my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from rimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.