The Pickup's Culture coverage is brought to you by Tulsa Artists' Coalition Gallery, 40 Years of Empowering Tulsa Artists. Visit TAC Gallery to see American Highway Revisited by VC Torneden and Melinda Harvey Green, June 5 – 27, 2026.
Tulsa Shakespeare Company: The Tempest
Lynn Riggs Theater
through May 23, 2026
Shit’s heavy right now. This season of theatre in Tulsa has been a little heavy, too, full of revolutionary assassins, dead seagulls and brothers, axe murderesses, heady Civil War-era debate, and teens going through it. So we give thanks to the theatre gods for the Tulsa Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest that’s running at the rainbow-festooned Lynn Riggs Theatre through Saturday.
It’s spangly. It’s whimsical. It’s heart-thrumming. It’s messy (complimentary). It’s got men in corsets and some of Shakespeare’s best raunchy jokes. It’s anti-totalitarian, pro-liberation, and profoundly not part of any tech-generated hellscape. (Director Rachel Steed made a point of that in her opening remarks at the dress rehearsal I attended: “No AI was used in the making of this production!” Applause.) In short, it’s a place to take shelter in this storm.
For all the greatness of his earlier works, Shakespeare’s last play is my favorite, a story about power and betrayal, conquest and isolation, shipwreck and abandonment and belonging—with a throughline about forgiveness that hits the tenderest spot in my heart. But I’ve never seen a production of The Tempest that makes total disaster feel so fun.
As in their previous productions, Tulsa Shakespeare Company throws the audience right into it from the first beat, with a fast-paced, storm-tossed scene on a boat (i.e., a bunch of chairs huddled up together) featuring six characters in all manner of dress: harem pants, orange wig, leather harness, tiara, mauve blazer, cowboy boots, combat boots, the works. This is definitely not Shakespeare that’s taking itself too seriously, but we still get the shudder of fear and tumult that launches this play, setting a course for the deeper themes that emerge in the aftermath of this wreckage.