Write a Review of the 2 Performances From Shakkespears the Tempeswt
The only way to read Shakespeare's "The Storm" is equally a farewell; a play written, if you lot will, for his retirement banquet, to be performed before he's handed his aureate lookout and finally has more time to spend with his family. It is my favorite of all his plays, containing a line I embrace as my alleviation: We are such stuff every bit dreams are made on, and our petty life is rounded with a sleep. The author who saw more securely into human nature than any other looked into himself and decided he had finished his work.
Julie Taymor's moving-picture show "The Tempest" doesn't experience similar a adieu. She does not abstain her rough magic. In a film filled with audio and fury, she rages against the dying of the light. In that location is no reconciliation or closure. What reads as a poetic acceptance of human mortality plays as the defiance of a magician clinging to familiar tricks.
She doesn't capture Shakespeare'south tone (or his meaning, I believe), but she certainly has boldness in her reinvention. The best thing she does is alter the sex of Prospero, the exiled Knuckles of Milan, who has fled to a remote island with his girl. Here Prospero becomes Prospera and is magnificently played by Helen Mirren with more than ferocity than resignation. Prospera's daughter, Miranda (Felicity Jones), at present seems more suited at her side; Prospera empathizes with her as Prospero never did. Indeed, all the relationships on the island curiously seem more natural when the character becomes a woman.
Consider Ariel (Ben Whishaw), the androgynous sprite who follows Prospera'due south bidding and performs her magic. Ariel is neither male nor female, and while Prospero seemed to treat the spirit as an extremely skillful pet, Prospera relates more than to Ariel's functions as a companion and helpmate. And there is Caliban, the original inhabitant of the isle earlier the get-go boat arrived from Milan. He resents the usurpers and invokes ane of the most terrible curses in literature: All the infections that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him by inch-meal a disease! Here, played by Djimon Hounsou as an African, Caliban evokes parallels with colonialism, and Prospera seems more than fix to see him beneath her instinctive rejection.
Taymor has gathered a cast, which, for the most part, would be ideal for a traditional phase version of the play, and embedded them in special effects that begin with the word storm and build to a frenzy. The dialogue is pure Shakespeare (proving again that he is easier to empathize when spoken than read), simply these gifted actors sometimes seem to be proverb the words every bit someone with a chain-saw cuts firewood in the side by side room.
Taymor's stagecraft is bold merely not measured. If the top is in sight, she aims for information technology. This worked with her passionate film "Titus," based on Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus." That'due south a bloody early play suited to extremes. "The Storm" contains more resignation; it is a search for sunset. In that location'due south a gentle certitude to information technology, despite some quite violent scenes. The best operation I've seen is Barbara Gaines' product 2002 production for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, where she used daring rigging to float some actors similar performers for Cirque du Soleil. With her you felt love; with Taymor this fourth dimension, determination.
Many gifted actors join Mirren in finding their own moments within the melee. Felicity Jones as Miranda is hopeful and virginal. Rex Alonso is played with sad resignation by David Strathairn. Djimon Hounsou plays an angry and most politicized Caliban. Russell Brand and Alfred Molina are bawdy as two seafarers who wander off and enlist Caliban as a drinking buddy. Alan Cumming and Chris Cooper, play Sebastian and Antonio equally filled with ominous ill volition. Tom Conti is the good King Gonzalo.
They inhabit locations (Hawaii) and remarkable soundstage sets for Prospera's Milan lab and island spaces. Interiors are sensational: her alchemist's workshop and a room with alarming stair steps climbing at an angle. There are all the cliffs you could perhaps want for Prospera to stand atop and howl at the sea.
All of these elements are in identify. Taymor might have turned down the estrus. You do not have to insist with "The Storm," because it is a play that puts all exclamation behind it and is content to cast its magic staff into the sea. It is the play where Shakespeare shows that he knew how good he was.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sunday-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
Picture Credits
The Tempest (2010)
110 minutes
Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-tempest-2010