Word: caliban
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lion he once killed in a tribal rite. The affair works its magic, and Millie blossoms, while Stan falters in his search. The warden is killed by poachers, but then a beautiful lion begins haunting the safari camp. The plot takes incredible turns, but Fabulist Ingalls (Mrs. Caliban), an American who has lived in London for 24 years, glides, with sly humor, into the fantastic so deftly that she makes events seem not only plausible but inevitable...
What makes the play memorable, though, is the virtuoso acting of Ben Evett as Ariel and Kerrick Johnson as Caliban, the sorceror Prospero's two slaves. Ariel and Caliban are pivotal figures, representing the opposing realms of Air and Earth that lie at the heart of Shakespeare's thematic dilemma. And in this production, Evett and Johnson can hardly do wrong, expertly treading the line between man and spirit that make these two of Shakespeare's more difficult roles...
SEVERAL PROBLEMS MAR Bradford's approach to the text. Why, for instance, has he not cut the distracting subplots often excluded in contemporary productions--such as the hackneyed drinking scenes between Caliban and minor characters Trinculo and Stephano, or the awkwardly staged scene in which the goddesses Iris, Ceres and Juno appear? These types of passages have little charm and distract the audience from the more important issues of the play. Bradford could have populated his huge stage in other ways...
...Evett and Kerrick Johnson really have it bad, though. Respectively playing wood sprite Ariel and the demidemon Caliban, they must cover themselves in body makeup. In the words of Kermit the Frog, it's not easy being green; it takes Ben an hour-and-a-half to apply the frog-colored goo that allows him to pass for a sprite. Later, with practice, he hopes to be able to go through the process in a mere hour...
Andrews calls Rowse's Shakespeare the "Caliban" edition, after the half-man, half-brute in The Tempest. Maynard Mack, professor emeritus of English at Yale, tends to agree. Rowse's curious hybrid, Mack says, results in a "language that was never spoken by anyone-not by Shakespeare, not by us. People want the real thing. They don't want deodorized versions of the original. They read Shakespeare precisely because they realize that he belongs to a different world and time, and they want to taste and sense that time." Since last week marked the 420th anniversary...