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drkottke 's review for:
The Tempest
by William Shakespeare
For me, a production of The Tempest has to only get one moment right:
MIRANDA: Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!
PROSPERO: 'Tis new to thee.
Encapsulated here is everything I believe about the responsibilities of parenting and teaching. If a show tries to play this moment ironically, cynically, for laughs, or any such way that doesn't elicit a sense of wonder and a lump in the throat of the audience, I'm done. Of course, you gotta get all the way through to make that judgment. The 2018 Stratford Festival production does that admirably. The 1992 production, which was my first visit to Stratford, did not, and put a whole lot of fly in the ointment into the ending. Over the years, I've enjoyed all manner of takes on this show, from "Forbidden Planet" to productions that confront a colonialist perspective in Prospero's command of the island's native spirits to Alan Moore making Prospero the ultimate supervillain. My litmus test is in that briefest of snippets of dialogue, near the very end, a moment of healing after confronting the extremity of evil that humanity is capable of in "King Lear."
MIRANDA: Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!
PROSPERO: 'Tis new to thee.
Encapsulated here is everything I believe about the responsibilities of parenting and teaching. If a show tries to play this moment ironically, cynically, for laughs, or any such way that doesn't elicit a sense of wonder and a lump in the throat of the audience, I'm done. Of course, you gotta get all the way through to make that judgment. The 2018 Stratford Festival production does that admirably. The 1992 production, which was my first visit to Stratford, did not, and put a whole lot of fly in the ointment into the ending. Over the years, I've enjoyed all manner of takes on this show, from "Forbidden Planet" to productions that confront a colonialist perspective in Prospero's command of the island's native spirits to Alan Moore making Prospero the ultimate supervillain. My litmus test is in that briefest of snippets of dialogue, near the very end, a moment of healing after confronting the extremity of evil that humanity is capable of in "King Lear."