"This 'Tempest' is always lovely to behold and often illuminating. Don’t expect the stormy passions that can move an audience to tearful wonder...Moments of captivating pageantry arrive often enough to distract you from this production’s lack of dramatic urgency...Caliban says at one point, 'sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.” That’s a pretty good description of the sum effect of this softly seductive production."
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"Shakespeare in the Park has been so solidly enjoyable in recent summers that it’s sad to find one’s mind wandering in boredom, or eyes glazing over at a banal set. Such is the case at Michael Greif’s glossy, static, weakly interpreted 'Tempest', a late romance that offers a director the chance to conjure equal parts magic and melancholy. Instead of either, we get half-baked visuals and Sam Waterston as a vaguely rabbinical exiled duke-turned-wizard Prospero, whose enchanted cloak resembles a talis."
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"Stale choices sap 'The Tempest’s' power...Shakespeare’s uncanny investigation of love and freedom, and the way they are often both conjoined and opposed, cannot strike home unless an audience is at the same time elevated, even thrilled, by what it sees and hears...Perhaps, as is often the case, the company just needed more rehearsal and the designers a bigger budget. Still, we should not excuse too much. Prospero, matchmaking for Ariel, explains that he must make the wooing difficult 'lest too light winning make the prize light.' So, too, 'The Tempest.'"
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"To see 'The Tempest' acted under a night sky is like hearing 'The Messiah' sung in a cathedral. Whatever the flaws of the production, the sheer rightness of the setting usually makes them forgettable, or at least ignorable, and you come away thinking only of the work...I didn’t agree with all of Mr. Greif’s choices, but I was glad to go along with them, and by evening’s end my cavils felt picayune: Nothing mattered but the truth and beauty of the play itself."
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"The rest of Michal Greif’s production is merely mundane, from hodge-podge costumes, uninspired seascape setting to the mixed bag of acting styles that are the mark of most Central Park Shakespeare productions, sometimes winningly so, sometimes, as here, not...I wish there were more humor in the production; even the comic relief Shakespeare provides with the jester Trinculo and the drunken sailor Stephano seemed to be running on low batteries."
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"It’s impossible to reconcile with this stubbornly unengaging staging in a production filled with missed opportunities and out-of-synch moments. And it’s too bad, because the production starts with promise...Yes the show is free. But it’s also a reminder that bad shows happen to good actors, good directors and deserving audiences. But when all is said and done, this is a 'Tempest' that should be tossed."
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"'The Tempest' and Central Park were made for each other, so it must have taken a Herculean effort to drain Shakespeare’s most mysterious play of all its magic. Despite some thunderous sound-and-light effects, this plodding production lacks the power of enchantment...Everything about this earthbound production is presented in such literal terms that even the lyricism of the language is dashed upon the rocks and left to drown."
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"Shakespeare in the Park is nothing if not wildly uneven. So it goes with the Public Theater’s latest, 'The Tempest,' in which some of the acting is inventive and unexpected, and some is utterly mediocre. Unfortunately, Sam Waterston’s Prospero falls into the latter camp...After an underwhelming storm, there’s a beautiful bit of stage wizardry involving Ariel. It’s a little late, but at least it leaves you believing in magic."
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