Flavio Gaete and Anna Bikales Photo by Craig Best

This is the company that a few years ago put up an impressive production of Othello, where the audience was seated in a former Manhattan foundry among massive castings and statuary.

The setting is a bit more genteel for what is billed as "A Shakespeare Cabaret" taken from The Tempest by Artistic Director Craig Bacon. Located on Prospect Park West, the walls of Casa Duse are adorned with a museum's worth of portraits and memorabilia from theatre and opera productions of its namesake's era. Audience members are invited to partake in complimentary wine and hors d'oeuvres as they admire the display both before and after the performance, included in the $44.52 ticket price.

With fewer than 50 general admission seats set up in the home's parlor, director Janina Picard's ensemble of six perform in a small playing area with the actors providing vocals and some playing instruments for composer, music director, and musician/actor Flavio Gaete's very effective background soundscape and period-suggesting melodies.

"Once upon a time, there was an extraordinary healer who was known as Sycorax," explains Bacon as a folksy Prospero in the play's prologue, referring to a character mentioned, but never appearing, in The Tempest.

In Shakespeare's fantasy, Sycorax was banished for witchcraft to a remote island while pregnant with her son Caliban, who figures greatly in the bard's story of the magician Prospero's revenge on those who banished him to the same island many years later.

But in Tempest Tossed, we're told, "Our story is the dream of Sycorax: what befalls her son and the men who marooned her there."

Possessing an eerie aloofness and calm as Sycorax, Anna Bikales, accompanying herself on a small harp, sings and prays to Goddess of Witchcraft Hecate to "join with Setebos to bring the guilty men to bay" as Caliban (Blake Brundy) lovingly sits by her side.

Enhanced with stylized Butoh movement by Yoshiko Usami, the play continues as a truncated version of The Tempest, keeping only the scenes dramatizing how Prospero has his enslaved spirit Ariel (spunky and energetic Jacquie Bonnet, who makes lots of eye contact with front row patrons), create a storm that shipwrecks the noble Ferdinand (Brundy) to the island, as a potential mate for his daughter Miranda (Clara Tristan).

Throughout it all, Bikales' Sycorax is a cool, observing presence, playing both harp and electric bass, but after a large prologue buildup and the company's website promising, "the powerful witch Sycorax is finally given a voice," the character only speaks again for a brief moment toward the end, offering her blessings and forgiveness.

Despite that dramatic quibble, the combination of the intriguing venue and spirited production make for a delightfully engaging time.