The Tempest
Opening Night: June 16, 2015
Closing: July 5, 2015
Theater: Delacorte Theatre
Academy Award nominee Sam Waterston (Newsroom, Law & Order, The Public’s King Lear) and Jesse Tyler Ferguson(Modern Family, The Comedy of Errors) return in THE TEMPEST, Shakespeare’s classic about young love, old enemies and the eternal magic of storytelling. Exiled to a fantastical island, Prospero unleashes a churning storm to shipwreck the traitor brother who stole his throne and settle the score once and for all. But bitter revenge is upended by newfound love in this sublime masterpiece that proves we are all “such stuff as dreams are made on.” Tony Award nominee Michael Greif (Romeo and Juliet, Our Lady of Kibeho, If/Then, Next to Normal) directs.
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June 16, 2015
As befits a work called “The Tempest,” there’s thunder and lightning aplenty in the production that opened on Tuesday night at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Yet “rough magic” — which is abjured at the play’s end by its ruling wizard, Prospero (a sagely bearded Sam Waterston) — is scarce throughout this exquisite-looking interpretation of Shakespeare’s valedictory romance. The enchantment at work here — and enchantment there is — belongs to a gentler order. As conjured by the director, Michael Greif, and a crack technical team of aesthetic sorcerers, this “Tempest” is always lovely to behold and often illuminating about the patterns that shape this curious, genre-defying tale of revenge and reconciliation on theater’s ultimate fantasy island. But don’t expect the stormy passions that can move an audience to tearful wonder. If Mr. Greif’s “The Tempest” were to be compared with one of the visions that Prospero whips up, it wouldn’t be the ship-sinking gale of the opening scene. Think instead of one of the senses-stroking, sumptuous banquets or parades of sprites and goddesses that he summons as evanescent home entertainment.
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