BWW Reviews: Greif's THE TEMPEST of the Teapot Variety

Throughout his notable career on stage and screen, Sam Waterston's forte has been to pull audiences in with underplay and sensitivity. This quality is certainly evident as he returns to the leading role of Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest, which he first tackled over forty years ago at Lincoln Center.

Director Michael Greif surrounds him with a production that is full of entertaining performances and interesting ideas without establishing firm propulsion or taking advantage of the script's magical elegance. As the play is rather thin on plot and expansive in explanation, the evening tends to labor on a bit at times, but there is sufficient enjoyment to be had at the Delacorte's first entry this summer.

Looking like an aging flower child and speaking with poetic softness, Waterston plays the deposed Duke of Milan, shipwrecked on a strange and magical island for twelve years after being sent adrift at sea with his daughter, Miranda, by his brother, Antonio. Having obtained magical powers through learning, he commands his enslaved spirit, Ariel, to create a storm that will shipwreck Antonio and his royal cohorts on the same island so that he may reclaim what was rightfully his by birth.

It's a tale that is normally played for vengeance, but Waterston's Prospero seems more of the forgiving sort. Though not lacking in vitality, he gives the impression of weary man who simply wants to tie up all the loose ends of his life and make sure his daughter is in a secure place before living out his final days where, as Shakespeare has him put it, every third though will be of his grave.

The storm that shipwrecks the royals is represented primarily by lighting designer David Lander and sound designer Jason Crystal with Acme Sound Partners. (Percussionist Arthur Solari accentuates the text throughout the evening.) Riccardo Hernandez's set design has large upstage panels depicting rough seas visible throughout the play and the skeletal suggestions of a ship and island locations, played on a stage of wooden planks.

The evening's standout performance belongs to Louis Cancelmi's Caliban, described as Prospero's "savage and deformed slave." A muscular man, Cancelmi's tense physicality and stammering speech seem modeled after that of a chimpanzee. Chris Perfetti makes an imposing impression as a leather-clad skinhead Ariel.

Rodney Richardson's Ferdinand literally flips for Francesca Carpanini's Miranda, but the actors playing the young lovers don't seem to be aware of how funny their roles are. No such problem regarding Danny Mastrogiorgio and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who offer some inspired clowning as Stephano and Trinculo.

There's some nice musical pageantry involving contorting bodies and a silk aerialist, but this Tempest rarely whips up a storm.

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