The Tempest Steppenwolf Theatre CompanyOLD TIMES City Lit Theater4PINTER AstonRep Theatre Company at Peter Jones Gallery
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The Bard even wrote a role for the winter: Prospero, from The Tempest. Running now at Steppenwolf Theatre in a slow-building but ultimately fascinating and delightful production directed by Tina Landau, the play is thought to have been Shakespeare’s last—and Prospero, an old nobleman who’s spent his years learning and working magic, a poeticized version of the playwright. Prospero’s climactic renunciation of sorcery is seen as a 56-year-old Shakespeare’s farewell to the theater. And the actor who plays Prospero may be giving a valedictory of his own.
At 65, Frank Galati needn’t be saying farewell to anything. But his career—especially as an adapter and director—has been all about magic. He’s the guy who made it rain on Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath and so beautifully realized the lives and minds of Picasso and Gertrude Stein in She Always Said, Pablo. There’s definitely something evocative about seeing him in the role of a man who creates masques with the help of sprites.
And the dramatic payoff is enormous. When James Vincent Meredith’s smoldering Antonio can’t bring himself to reconcile with his brother, the silence is electric. When Jon Michael Hill’s buoyant Ariel helps his master master himself, the moment is expansive. Every time K. Todd Freeman’s rueful Caliban drags himself out of his little pit with a shackle on his ankle, the ugly resonances multiply. And when Alana Arenas’s sweet Miranda declares her love for Ferdinand, the shipwrecked young white kid, all you can do is hope.
