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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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