Word: prospero
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...other mountings of The Tempest--in 1960 and 1971. The version that Edward Payson Call directed in 1971 was largely a failure, but William Ball had managed in 1960 to turn out the finest Tempest I have ever seen, thanks to a strong cast headed by Morris Carnovsky's Prospero, Clayton Corzatte's Ariel, and Earle Hyman's Caliban. And this despite the ill-advised total omission of the opening storm scene...
True to the real Bermuda, Ming Cho Lee has designed a coral setting. There is a large entrance to Prospero's den, which can be closed off in several ways, and steps leading to an upper level from which Prospero and Ariel can look down upon the happenings they control...
...central role is that of Prospero, the play's Grand Puppeteer, which was highly suited to the talents of Richard Burbage, for whom Shakespeare fashioned his Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, Lear and other major parts. The role is more than three times as long as any other in the play, and the character has been thought to stand for God, Jesus, Fate, Justice, Art, Intellect, the Ideal Ruler, the Colonizer, the Grumpy Old Man, and a host of other things including Shakespeare himself...
...this weekend's press opening, Kenneth Haigh's Prospero seemed imbued with a weariness that I don't think either he or the director intended. Haigh's load this summer is enough to tire anyone: when he is not doing Prospero, he is playing either Brutus (an even longer role) or Malvolio. At any rate, his Prospero is not yet a sustained piece of work...
...wondrous box meant to entertain? To elevate? To instruct? To anesthetize? The medium, in its sheer unknowable possibilities, seems to arouse extreme reactions: contempt for its banal condition as the ghetto of the sitcom, or else grandiose metaphysical ambitions for a global village. The tube is Caliban and Prospero, cretin and magician. "What makes television so frightening," writes Critic Jeff Greenfield, "is that it performs all the functions that used to be scattered among different sources of information and entertainment." Television could, if we let it, electronically consolidate all of our culture -theater, ballet, concerts, newspapers, magazines and possibly most...