Word: tempests
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...staid Boston Herald stirred up the biggest tempest with an editorial, "Arts Festival Bludgeon," followed by an avalanche (poorly reasoned, for the most part) of letters to the editor, and another editorial. The first editorial accused the Festival of intentionally "propagandizing" abstractionism, and quoted in support of its stand some remarks by its art critic, Robert Taylor. Internecine strife resulted when Taylor, in hearty disagreement with the editorial, had to have recourse to the letters column in order to disassociate himself from his paper's policy...
...choosing The Tempest and Twelfth Night to start their sixth game, the American Shakespeare Festival led out an ace-king--for the first is the profoundest of the Bard's late romances, and the second is the finest of his comedies. The ace proved a winner, but the king unfortunately got trumped...
Coming after Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale, The Tempest caps a magnificent interrelated tetralogy, the dramatist's counterpart to the late Beethoven quartets Op. 130-133. All four plays explore the estrangement-remorse-reconciliation theme. But The Tempest is extraordinarily rich in meanings--in Mark Van Doren's felicitous words, "Any set of symbols, moved close to this play, lights up as in an electric field." Whatever else it may be, the play is a masterful study of the use and abuse of liberty (how often the very words "liberty," "free" and "freedom" crop up in the text...
...ideal foil is the ponderous Caliban of Earle Hyman (the only performer retained from the Festival's first Tempest in 1955, when he played the Boatswain). Caliban symbolizes evil, low I.Q., and rebellion towards authority: but he is a far more complex character than Ariel (and than usually portrayed), and it is from his lips that the word "grace" eventually issues. Hyman captures most of the complexity. When he emits those horrible words, "Burn but his books!"--especially odious for those of us who recall Senator McCarthy--the b's burst like bombs (significantly, Caliban's language is liberally peppered...
...background panels, designed by Rouben Ter-Arutanian in 1956 and used for the dozen productions since, are gone this summer. Instead, Ter-Arutunian has encased the whole proscenium and stage within a surface of giant potato chips. This adequately serves the exotic Mediterranean Bermuda that Shakespeare specified for The Tempest; but it proves less fitting for Tweifth Night. Director Jack London, who has previously shown a penchant for gimmicking up his productions, has really gone 'round the bend this time, and must shoulder almost all the blame. I bet Shakespeare wishes he'd never added the subtitie "or, What...