Word: stephano
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...play's other actors try for less serious performances. Mike Gaw and Robert P. Chapski wryly exaggerate their cameos as Portia's unsuccessful suitors. Jeff Hobson is a nicely lecherous Lancelot Gobbo. Phil Fry squeezes the maximum comedic possibilities from his roles as servant Stephano and the blind Old Gobbo...
SEVERAL PROBLEMS MAR Bradford's approach to the text. Why, for instance, has he not cut the distracting subplots often excluded in contemporary productions--such as the hackneyed drinking scenes between Caliban and minor characters Trinculo and Stephano, or the awkwardly staged scene in which the goddesses Iris, Ceres and Juno appear? These types of passages have little charm and distract the audience from the more important issues of the play. Bradford could have populated his huge stage in other ways...
Like Serban, Strehler introduces anachronisms into his production - the commedia dell'arte for the comic duo of Trinculo and Stephano, for example, and a hint of Peking opera mannerism for Ariel - but they effectively underscore the contrasts between the spirit and human worlds, making the confrontation even more pointed. This is a Tempest of clarity, strength and purpose - exactly what was lacking in the Royal Opera's Turandot. The cross-cultural irony is inescapable: the English company presenting the Italian opera had failed, but the Italians staging an English classic had made a glorious success...
While a very roughhewn justice is dealt the plot, Trinculo, the jester, has become a blowsy demimondaine (Lola Pashalinski), and her companion, the drunken butler Stephano (Louis Zorich), looks like a disheveled French chef with a torn toque blanche. The pair do a crude parody of Mae West...