My first Tempest

So, as we kick off The Tempest, it’s ‘memory lane’ time…

Excuse me while I wax nostalgic.

Anthony Hopkins and Stephanie Zimbalist in the 1979 Mark Taper Forum production of The Tempest.
Anthony Hopkins and Stephanie Zimbalist in the 1979 Mark Taper Forum production of The Tempest.

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Podcast 85: Much Ado About Nothing: the Video Productions and Another Review

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This week’s podcast continues our two month-long discussion of Much Ado About Nothing, with reviews of some of the available video productions of the play, plus a live theater review of The Tempest by South Coast Repertory.

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Theatrical Review: The Tempest by South Coast Repertory

Last Sunday, my wife Lisa and I had the pleasure of catching the South Coast Repertory production of The Tempest in Costa Mesa, CA. Now The Tempest holds a pretty special spot in my heart, as it was the first major Shakespeare I ever saw, a magical production with Anthony Hopkins as Prospero at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles back in 1978; I’ll talk about that show more when we get to that play at the end of this project, but suffice to say it was a seminal moment in my love of Shakespeare.

The Tempest is a tough play to pull off. It deals with magic, and how to convey that on stage? It’s not easy. It often comes off as overly solemn or worse, cheesy. The earlier production began with a piece of stagecraft that set a magical tone (especially to this fifteen year-old) and then used that initial shock to carry the play. This production takes a different tack, however. Prospero is a magician, so why not show magic? Real magic (if that’s not an oxymoron).

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