Word: caliban
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...first time police officers went on trial for beating Rodney King, Los Angeles looked at itself in the mirror and saw Caliban. Not everyone recognized the same monster. Some saw racist authority and biased justice. Some saw a lawless citizen and mob madness. But for almost everyone, inside and outside the smoking city, the trial became a symbolic test of national values -- something that trials, with their focus on factual specifics and winner-take-all outcomes, are not constructed to be. The acquittals were so shocking to a nation mesmerized by a videotape, and so achingly rejected in riot...
Chicu Reddy, as Prospero's exploited slave, Caliban, would naturally dominate a production organized on these lines. For the opening few scenes, he looks like he will. He acts with presence and confidence, playing Caliban as the downtrodden but spirited revolutionary. But that interpretation just doesn't work. Caliban's situation strikes the viewer as poignant because, by our society's terms, he is only semi-human. To transform him into the streetwise troublemaker that Reddy portrays is to dodge that most pressing issue. Before the weaknesses in Reddy's Caliban become obvious, the director loses interest in his brainchild...
...occasional redeeming factor interrupted the monotone of bad direction. The energy of the storm scene, and the agonized crawling to evoke the landing on the island both impressed with their improvisational power and dynamism. The comic interchange between Caliban, Stephano and Trincula sometimes rose above cliche, with original blocking and choreography...
Steve Petersen and Jeff Branion as the drunken cohorts Trinculo and Stephano are the delightful exceptions in The Tempest, their comic rapport is as convincing as it is entertaining. And John Ducey as Caliban frequently conveys the pathos and grotesqueness of his character effectively. But their performances are not enough to redeem a production rendered in a dramatic monochrome...
Like Prospero, Stern is a magician who confronts unruly influences in a brave new world. The Midwestern Caliban is played by Hartnell, husband of Stern's sister and his most troublesome client -- a "small-town boy made good, gone bad." To see him on the floor of the commodity exchange is to observe a force of nature: "He stepped into the tiered levels of the pits, shaking hands and tossing greetings like Frank Sinatra onstage, commanding the same reverence, or, in some quarters, subverted loathing." When he admits, "I've always wanted to do what other people wouldn't," Stern...