The Tempest and Twelfth Night

By choosing The Tempest and Twelfth Night to start their sixth game, the American Shakespeare Festival led out an ace-king--for the first is the profoundest of the Bard's late romances, and the second is the finest of his comedies. The ace proved a winner, but the king unfortunately got trumped.

Coming after Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale, The Tempest caps a magnificent interrelated tetralogy, the dramatist's counterpart to the late Beethoven quartets Op. 130-133. All four plays explore the estrangement-remorse-reconciliation theme. But The Tempest is extraordinarily rich in meanings--in Mark Van Doren's felicitous words, "Any set of symbols, moved close to this play, lights up as in an electric field." Whatever else it may be, the play is a masterful study of the use and abuse of liberty (how often the very words "liberty," "free" and "freedom" crop up in the text!).

For this production, all the great roles of the play are expertly handled. The central character is, of course, the wise, bookish philosopher-magician Prospero, who prospers indeed in the hands of Morris Carnovsky. Carnovsky's performance is one to put with the unsurpassable Shylock he achieved three years ago. He brings a resonant voice, great dignity, and deep understanding to a most difficult role. He is even able to command attention all through his long opening narrative. And towards the end, after his most famous speech, when he says, "A turn or two I'll walk, To still my beating mind," he puts the fingers of both hands to his temples; few actors can bring this gesture off, but Carnovsky makes you know he has an attack of migraine. He can also bring sense and conviction to those vexatious little repetitions like "so, so, so" (Othello twice has to give out "O! O! O!," and Lear even expires saying "Never, never, never, never, never!"--as a matter of fact. Carnovsky would seem to be ready to attempt Lear next season; how about it, Festival managers?).

Prospero's two servants, Ariel and Caliban, represent his control over the upper elements (air and fire) and the lower elements (earth and water). Ariel being half angel and Caliban half beast, the two constitute the termini of Shakespeare's world of humans. Clayton Corzatte, new to the company, is a model Ariel. He is lithe and clean, with an appositely light and attractive tenor voice (for both speech and song). His nimble and graceful movement, unprecedented on this stage, deserves no less a term than choreography; he performs the notable trick of being delicate and sprightly without ever becoming effeminate.

An ideal foil is the ponderous Caliban of Earle Hyman (the only performer retained from the Festival's first Tempest in 1955, when he played the Boatswain). Caliban symbolizes evil, low I.Q., and rebellion towards authority: but he is a far more complex character than Ariel (and than usually portrayed), and it is from his lips that the word "grace" eventually issues. Hyman captures most of the complexity. When he emits those horrible words, "Burn but his books!"--especially odious for those of us who recall Senator McCarthy--the b's burst like bombs (significantly, Caliban's language is liberally peppered with plosive labials). Yet Hyman shows us the pathos of this bastard brute too, and he underlines Caliban's dim gropings for aesthetic values in that great speech beginning. "The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not." Hyman's Caliban lacks only the digital "long nails" he himself speaks of.

Joyce Ebert's compassionate Miranda and John Ragin's gallant Ferdinand are highly affecting. Their first meeting is one of the most sublime in all theatre, surpassed only perhaps by that of Siegfried and Brunnehilde in Wagner's Ring. In the log-toting scene, it is a lovely touch to have Ferdinand caress a log in his arms as he ruminates over his beloved, and then have Miranda embrace the same log out of bashfulness during their ensuing duologue. (Another inspired bit comes at the end when Prospero gives Ariel his much-desired freedom: here the fingertips of the two almost touch, like those of Michelangelo's God and Adam.)

William Hickey and Clifton James make a fine Laurel & Hardy team out of Trinculo and Stephano. Anne Fielding. Rae Allen, and Sada Thompson look pretty and sing well (particularly Miss Allen) as the goddesses Iris, Ceres, and Juno in the brief but beautiful Jonsonian masque arranged by Prospero. Lee Hoiby's incidental music is admirable, though his songs lack distinction. Robert Fletcher's set and costume designs and Tharon Musser's lighting are suitable.

Only two important shortcomings characterize this production. The first is the total excision of the first scene, which gives the play its title--doubly inexcusable since the text of the play is, except for The Comedy of Errors, the shortest in the entire canon. The second is the lack-luster playing of the king and his companions (save Richard Waring's well-spoken Antonio), of whom Loring Smith's Alonzo and O. Z. Whitehead's Sebastian are embarrassingly inept. Still, the show is a striking success for William Ball in his directorial debut for the Festival.

The versatile complex of latticed background panels, designed by Rouben Ter-Arutanian in 1956 and used for the dozen productions since, are gone this summer. Instead, Ter-Arutunian has encased the whole proscenium and stage within a surface of giant potato chips. This adequately serves the exotic Mediterranean Bermuda that Shakespeare specified for The Tempest; but it proves less fitting for Tweifth Night. Director Jack London, who has previously shown a penchant for gimmicking up his productions, has really gone 'round the bend this time, and must shoulder almost all the blame. I bet Shakespeare wishes he'd never added the subtitie "or, What You Will" to this play. At any rate, London has turned Tweifth Night into a comedy of errors. Imagine, if you can, a neoionic tempietto on stage right, with a hideous stained-glass dome (this is Orsino's lair; no wonder he says. "The appetite may sicken, and so die."); and, on the left, a two-story pavilion with Victorian gimcrackery and shades that are raised and lowered with annoying frequency (Olivia's summer resort, and last resort). In the center we have a candy-cane flagpole with pennon, and two bathhouses on wheels, with red and green stripes. Assorted persons cavort about in sailor suits or swim suits. No Illyria on earth was ever like this!

The errors continue to pile up. Messrs. Smith (Sir Toby) and Whitehead (Sir Andrew) insist on accenting "exquisite" on the second syllable; and their extended byplay with a bath-towel completely distracts from Malvolio's crucial letter-reading scene. As Malvolio, Richard Waring--as fine a classical speaker as any actor in the company--is vastly over-directed in his climactic cross-garter scene. One of the points of this scene is that Olivia abhors the color of yellow, yet she keeps training in and out carrying a yellow rose. After her marriage, reference is made to her wedding ring, yet she wears some. When Toby says, "Let's have a catch it is ridiculous for Andrew to comment, "By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast," unless they have sung a catch. As the disguided Viola, Katharine Hepburn is properly masculine and looks surprisingly young; but her voice-ay, there's the rub. Her delivery is jarring, mechanical, and unintelligent; both she and the director fall even to perceive that the rhythm of "your own most pregnant and voch safed ear" demands that the penultimate word be trisyliabic. Herman Chessid's incidental music is inferior, though his songs are good ("O Mistress Mine" and "Come Away, Death" are fetchingly sung by a boy soprano, David Grees).

The chief virtues of the production are Sada Thompson's full-bosomed, breezy portrayal of Maria, and Clayton corzatte's brief appearances as Sebastian--indeed, he is the Festival's major trouvaille this season. But, on the whole, the cast of this production does not seem to believe in what it is made to do; and and I can only sympathise.

(Ed. Note: The drive to the picturesque Stratford grounds by the Housatonic takes just under three hours via the Massachusetts Turnpike and Exit 53 from the Merritt Parkway. There are free outdoor facilities for picknickers.