Old Play in Manhattan

The Tempest (by William Shakespeare; produced by Cheryl Crawford) was probably Shakespeare's farewell to the theater--a farewell of mingled enchantment and ennui. Done with trying to make sense of life--or even of a play--Shakespeare pitched upon a strange island world almost outside geography. There, while his playwriting became a tangled, stunted vine, his poetry blazed like a burning bush. There Prospero, the banished Duke of Milan, tended his daughter Miranda, shipwrecked his enemies by waving his magic wand, ruled over the spirit Ariel, all speed and light, and the monster Caliban, that "freckled whelp hag-born." There also the shipwrecked men tediously conspired and caroused. When, at the last -- his enemies forgiven, Ariel and Caliban set free -- Prospero forswears magic, he seems indeed (as many men have thought) to symbolize Shakespeare himself, breaking his own poetic wand.

This half-gorgeous, half-garrulous fantasy does not take easily to the stage, and is seldom performed. But last week, under the shrewd direction of Margaret Webster, who has pumped new life into Hamlet, Macbeth, many another Shakespeare play, The Tempest, proved surprisingly good theater. Its length cut, its storyline sharpened, its comedy underscored, it held to gether and moved along, became a more mettlesome play than the one Shakespeare wrote.

It was also a less poetic one. In The Tempest, with its wonderful language, words speak louder than actions; not everybody in the Webster production knew how to utter them. Arnold Moss was a sonorous and commanding Prospero, Frances Heflin a sensitive Miranda. But as Ariel, Ballerina Vera Zorina let a good many speeches dwindle, and her grace was cold rather than sunlit. As Caliban, Negro Actor Canada Lee could not (like Shakespeare) make poetry of ugliness. Stressing the rather dull comedy also shattered the mood; the revolving stage was more practical than atmospheric. This generation may never see a livelier Tempest; it may well see a lovelier one.

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