Word: prosperos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...equate the Duke with the Christian God are surely in error--unless God is scheming, deceitful, mendacious, irresponsible, fallible, and not without a streak of cruelty. The role is a flawed attempt at the kind of semi-divine authority-figure that Shakespeare would eventually limn so wonderfully as Prospero in The Tempest...
Gardner's book gives ample scope to the view that man is more naturally kin to Cain than Abel. Yet it is closer to a more entertaining tradition-the literary monster made real because he has been made so human. Variously and happily, Grendel suggests Caliban, grumping around Prospero's island like the first exploited colonial, Milton's Lucifer, that voluble, self-righteous rebel simmering eternally on a lake of fire, even King Kong on the Empire State Building, bemusedly plucking at those 30-cal. holes in his furry chest...
...Prospero, Bernard Holmberg properly dominated the plot's complications. His long soliloquies demonstrated the remarkable range of control-both as written and performed-that Prospero exercises over the other inhabitants of the island. Holmberg was affectionately tender to his daughter Miranda, firmly in command of the fairy Ariel; angrily severe in his orders to Caliban his slave. His Prospero possessed the strength and virility to make the aging character less concerned with his own leave-taking than with ensuring himself that those around him awake to the significance of their destined relationships in the proper spirit of awe and responsibility...
Elin Diamond's sensual Ariel complemented Holmberg's methodical Prospero by igniting in him those sparks of sexual creativity that, as much as much as anything else, trigger dramatic confrontations on the island. Interwoven with corresponding discussions of language's uses as well as interconnecting considerations of freedom and servility, the sexual energy of this production drew parallels among Miranda, her lover Ferdinand, Ariel, and Caliban in their individual comings-to-term with themselves...
...fact, possibly the only weak elements in this production were those scenes in which the shipwrecked nobles of Naples and Milan wandered through the isle. For their scenes were so naturally acted that they almost seemed underplayed-against Prospero's forceful presence, there was little doubt as to who was in control. To adept what Pasternak has written of Hamlet, the order of the acts has been schemed and plotted, and nothing can avert the final curtain's fall...