Word: prospero
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...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...
...neglect of the play is understandable--Shakespeare never painted a more thoroughly ugly, corrupt society than the Vienna of Measure for Measure. The rulers are hypocrites, the police are incompetent, and even the clowns are annoying. The Duke, a Prospero-like character who stage-manages much of the plot, takes a good look around his city and decides it needs a house-cleaning. But he's too good-hearted to enforce the stringent laws himself, so he abdicates in favor of his deputy Angelo, leaving to wander the country as a monk...
...wonderful to see Olivier this often these days, and it almost doesn't matter that the movies are so bad. If only he could liven up every dumb thriller or grace every little comedy. And if only he could go back to the stage too, and do Lear and Prospero and any new, good play that comes along. Screw Hitler--let's clone Oliver...
...extent, Heathcliff, Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Graham Weir in Term of Trial and Andrew Wyke in Sleuth. Perhaps, many hope, he will return to the stage someday, if not to undertake a more mature Lear (he did it in '46 at the Old Vic), then perhaps to portray Prospero. There are those of us who would swim the Atlantic for a chance to see that...