The Tempest by William Shakespeare Read Free Book Online Page B

reaction against this trend that directors in the early twenty-first century seem to have become interested in Ariel again.
    Whereas Prospero had traditionally been regarded as an elderly benign father-figure, a tradition that continued well into the twentieth century, more recent productions have often cast a much younger man and explored the contradictions within the text to reveal a complex, demanding character. The actor most deeply associated with the role in the twentieth century was Sir John Gielgud who performed it four times in the theater, the first time at the Old Vic in 1930 at the astonishingly young age of twenty-six. His interpretation evolved over the years and subsequent productions, culminating in the grave, beautiful performance in Peter Greenaway’s extraordinary film adaptation,
Prospero
’
s Books
. As one critic puts it,
    Gielgud has made the part very much his own, developing and deepening his interpretation over the years. From the rather nebulous shape of his first benevolent Prospero he has gradually explored the tensions and misgivings in the character so as to make him an altogether more dramatically complex and interesting figure. Through his successive assumptions of the part he has been instrumental in bringing about a revaluation of the play: a consideration of its serious themes as against an attitude to the work as an escapist romance dressed up in exotic trimmings and offering an opportunity for spectacular theatrical pyrotechnics. 18
    With the impact of “realistic” media such as film and television, there has been renewed interest and focus on the theatricality of theater and the metatheatricality of
The Tempest
has been explored by a number of directors. In 1968 Peter Brook directed a radical experimental production at the Roundhouse against a background of the cultural revolution of the 1960s which brought together players from France, Britain, Japan and the United States to explore theatrical techniques of expression. For the opening storm, for instance, a Japanese actor crouched vocalising sounds of wind and terror whilst the rest huddled together whimpering and trembling. It was an investigation of certain themes of the play, essentially mounted as an exercise for actors. It was, however, to bear fruit in many of Brook’s subsequent productions, most notably his celebrated
Midsummer Night
’s
Dream
in 1970. 19

    2. The play as magical spectacle, with elaborate design and Ariel center-stage as harpy above the “three men of sin”: Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1951, directed by Michael Benthall and designed by Loudon Sainthill.
    Peter Hall at the National Theater in 1974 saw the play “in terms of the Jacobean court masque and his staging was dominated by equivalents of the theatrical techniques which Inigo Jones introduced into England.” 20 Prospero took on the role of stage manager. Four yearslater Giorgio Strehler directed a spectacular Italian version with the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, Italy’s most celebrated and long-established repertory company. His production lasted for four hours and was widely acclaimed for its “overwhelming theatrical force and seriousness of purpose.” 21 The central focus was on Prospero and Ariel, converting “their relationship into a metaphor for the interaction of director and actor” with spectacle the keynote:
    Strehler’s production opened with a spectacular storm lasting fifteen minutes. Behind a huge transparent canvas an open-sailed ship was visible. Sailors clambered up the ropes; the rigging collapsed; the mast split. Throughout this scene vast blue waves billowed and rolled round the stage, created by huge lengths of blue silk—five thousand square yards of it—operated by sixteen unseen operators hidden under the stage, which was divided into three corridors with their floor shaped into mounds and hollows. Musicians beat drums, stage hands operated thunder sheets, and technicians provided bursts of