Word: mortons
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...name Caliban may simply be an anagram of cannibal (Shakespeare took some material for the play from Montaigne's essay on cannibals), or it may be related to cauliban, a Gypsy word for blackness, At any rate, Freedman has assigned the role here to a black actor, Joe Morton. A black Caliban is no novelty: the 1945 Webster production had the boxer-turned-actor Canada Lee, whose performance I found too monochromatic; and the 1960 mounting here had an exemplary Earle Hyman, who had been a superlative Othello here three years earlier...
...Morton (whom Bostonians will remember for his central role of Mr. Geeter in the long television series Watch Your Mouth, shown last year on WGBH) is giving the one outstanding performance in the current Tempest. With the splotchy face and long nails referred to in the text, Morton has worked out a fully rounded characterization. He crawls on his belly, he walks with a special bow-legged gait, and he indulges in puling vowels and animalistic exhalations of spleen. He knows how to emphasize the explosive consonants with which the dramatist peppered his part, and he displays a splendid singing...
...Morton superbly conveys the pathos, humor, pain and joy that make up much of this remarkable character. He is a worthy successor to our century's most celebrated Caliban, the late Robert Atkins--who first played Prospero but switched to Caliban and went on doing the latter for 40 years, portraying him as the kind of New World savage that Elizabethan voyagers liked to bring home for public side-show display; and to the extraordinary hippopotamian Caliban that Earle Hyman embodied on this very stage...
Freedman has given fresh significance to Pindarus--whom Cassius captured, forced into servitude, and finally frees-by assigning the role to a black actor (a forceful Joe Morton). Ray Dooley is sufficiently young-looking for the 21-year-old Octavius, and nicely captures the chill efficiency of this whiz kid with a fourragere on his uniform...
...resources avail able, a way will be found to conquer the sea's appetite. The town is about to hire an engineering firm to study solutions, such as extending the existing jetty or building groins off the shore to reduce the impact of the waves. But Geologist Morton is skeptical. "Any attempt to trap sediment on the island only works when you have a good sediment supply," he warns...