The Tempest at the Delacorte Theater
(L-R): Sam Waterston and Chris Perfetti in The Tempest.
The Tempest is not one of Shakespeare’s best plays. No production can hide the awkward motivations and over-exposition woven in to the Bard’s final play, a late-career fantasy that is easily interpreted as an autobiographical character study. But the new production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park at least convincingly makes the case for The Tempest as one of his most dramatically sound and structurally satisfying plays. At a little over 2,000 lines, it’s Shakespeare’s second-shortest, and the lean direction, by the prolific Michael Greif, emphasizes its lithe dexterity.
Sam Waterston, a Shakespeare in the Park veteran who first appeared on the Delacorte stage in 1963, plays Prospero, the usurped Duke of Milan who has for twelve years been banished to a Mediterranean island with his young daughter, Miranda (Francesca Carpanini, appropriately pure and very good). In his hermetic fury, Prospero, who’s been studying sorcery in his vast swaths of downtime, shipwrecks those who stole his position on the island as part of a larger scheme. Waterston first played Prospero forty-one years ago, in another Public production, and, perhaps unwisely, primes his age in his interpretation of the character. His Prospero is too doddering and indecisive, and Waterston’s is forever either screaming or whispering in quick turns (the better to be heard over a constant stream of live percussion that seems a little beside the point), a trait that becomes especially annoying in the long, unnecessary bouts of storytelling that fall to him as sole source of exposition. (Even the character acknowledges his long-windedness in this regard, at one point pausing in the middle of a tale to apologize, “No more yet of this / For 'tis a chronicle of day by day.”) Waterston renders our hero the least interesting character in the play.
Far more alluring is the “airy spirit” Ariel (Chris Perfetti), a sprite bound by Prospero in service to enact his supposedly complex but actually rather simple plan of revenge. Perfetti’s clearly emoted resentment and otherworldly mannerisms make for a perfect and penetrating fairy character, and his is by far the most fully formed performance of the production. The stage lights up when he enters. Less delicate but equally fun to watch is Louis Cancelmi’s Caliban—a character whose potential is rarely fully plumbed in most productions—who more than rises to the dramatic challenge of an expanded relationship with Miranda and whose monstrous physicality grounds the fantasy of his story in a horrifying reality. (Denis Jones did the choreography.) Prospero’s servants, in this case, outflank him.
Most of the cast, actually, is talented beyond measure, especially Bernard White as the goodly Antonio (Prospero’s only friend aboard ship) and Rodney Richardson as Prince Ferdinand of Naples. It helps that they do their work in a production of magnificent physical design (characteristic for Shakespeare in the Park, in which even the worst productions are at least fun to look at). Scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez creates a stark, beautiful landscape with a clear maritime influence that slowly empties and darkens as the show goes on, climaxing in a spell cast by Prospero in what appears to be a circle of stars and ending in an empty stage on which Waterston delivers the “Now my charms are o’erthrown” speech, said by some to be the most personal monologue Shakespeare ever wrote.
Here, at least, Waterston does not disappoint. Both he and Greif, as veteran showmen, recognize the significance and depth of the speech, which presents one of the most poignant breakings of the fourth wall in the history of language, a moving plea for connection between artist and audience. “As you from crimes would pardon'd be, / Let your indulgence set me free,” Prospero intones, asking for applause. It’s hardly indulgent to appreciate such consistently fine work from these institutions of the New York theater.
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