Play of Reconciliation
REHEARING the BBC version of The Tempest (from 1YC) I wondered whether it conforms to our usual impression of the play. It was a splendidly competent performance, in which nothing has been unconsidered. Some effects-Ariel, for example, apparently echoing out of empty airwere excellent, and no one could be better than Alfred Déller for Ariel’s singing voice. Yet The Tempest is surely a play of reconciliation, in the end of which the claims, of justice and mercy are harmonised. Perhaps we all have some uneasiness about Prospero, and have to remind ourselves that he is a figure in a kind of morality play. For we know that, if Prospero were a real man, no man (even a magician) 4is wise enough to be Providence. Here, we were perhaps uncomfortably reminded of this by Norman Shelley’s impressive but hard Prospero, and John Slater’s chuckling and likeable Caliban. It gave us a sneaking sympathy for the downtrodden brute, which may not be altogether wrong. It was a happy invention of Arnold Goodwin’s, in his puppet-version of the play, to have both Ariel and Caliban restored to freedom at the end.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530515.2.19.2.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 722, 15 May 1953, Page 10
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191Play of Reconciliation New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 722, 15 May 1953, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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