Review: ‘The Tempest’ Stars Sam Waterston and the Weather at Delacorte Theater
As befits a work called “The Tempest,” there’s thunder and lightning aplenty in the production that opened on Tuesday night at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Yet “rough magic” — which is abjured at the play’s end by its ruling wizard, Prospero (a sagely bearded Sam Waterston) — is scarce throughout this exquisite-looking interpretation of Shakespeare’s valedictory romance.
The enchantment at work here — and enchantment there is — belongs to a gentler order. As conjured by the director, Michael Greif, and a crack technical team of aesthetic sorcerers, this “Tempest” is always lovely to behold and often illuminating about the patterns that shape this curious, genre-defying tale of revenge and reconciliation on theater’s ultimate fantasy island.
