Tempest

I GRADUATED from Cardinal Dougherty. Then I spend eight years in the armed forces with every contingent of minority there is in this country. Everyone uses foul racial words against their own, and it is always OK. But if someone else outside the box even mentions one of those words, they apparently are wrong - and deserve punishment. As your article indicated, Dougherty's athletic director did not use the "n-word" to express his own thoughts, he repeated the regretful use of it by others regarding the school's football team.

The Tempest takes place on a mysterious island presided over by a puissant magician, and it is the strength of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival production of the play that the sense of place and character are established at the outset and maintained throughout. The storm and shipwreck that begin the play are impressively staged, and when the winds die, Prospero, the magician-ruler of the island who conjured the tempest, is revealed standing imperiously above everything, framed dramatically against a backdrop of craggy peaks.

The Tempest, Shakespeare's last play, is stuffed with juicy roles and theatrical opportunities: a magical island full of mysterious creatures, an exiled duke turned wizard, a shipwreck, a love story, and an enslaved sprite who casts spells on buffoons and drunks and fops and wicked aristocrats. It's a strange, gorgeous world. So it's an odd Tempest that takes place on a bare stage. Even odder, this latest production from Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival stars the monster Caliban.

No thunder and lightning, no alarums and hullabaloo attend the conjured shipwreck at the start of Shakespeare's valedictory masterpiece, The Tempest, in the revelatory Arden Theatre Company production that opened Tuesday for a month-long run. No shipwreck, in fact, is set before us - just a toy schooner, bobbing high above Hiroshi Iwasaki's draped and platformed set, that crosses from right to left until it is gently, silently plucked from its...

From the very beginning, the production of The Tempest by the Lantern Theater establishes that the play belongs to Prospero. Before the first scene's storm, we see Prospero sitting on a sort of natural throne built into the top of the hill suggested by Nick Embree's earthy, vine-covered set. From his perch, Prospero looms over the compact St. Stephen's Theater playing area, providing a strong visual reminder that nothing will occur in the play...

The most dispiriting sort of Shakespeare production isn't the one that's blatantly misconceived, nor the one in which the actors haven't the chops to execute an arresting overall idea. It's the one that appears not to have been conceived at all, the one that not only casts no fresh light on the play but also leaves the actors adrift in alien territory without signposts or landmarks. Such a production, unfortunately, is on view in the community hall of Holy Communion Lutheran Church, 2111 Sansom St., where the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival is staging The Tempest through Nov. 29. Directed by Eleanor Holdridge, this is not an awful Tempest; it's simply a dull and unnecessary one, presented on a three-quarters-round stage without a scrap of scenery save a wooden chest and, for a time, a blue ground cloth that the actors tend to trip over.

Theater companies cut Shakespeare to reflect casting, to indulge shortened attention spans, or to center the play on a director's artistic vision or insight, among other reasons. Curio Theatre's current production of The Tempest proves that a bit of risk lies in any of these approaches. And, like any gamble, it also hints at large, if quick, rewards. The Tempest's traditional three-hour run time presents one of Shakespeare's most straightforward plots. Courtly treachery dethroned Duke Prospero (Brian McCann)

Why is there a political tempest over U.S. funding for birth-control services in developing nations? Letting poor people limit the size of their families isn't just an anti-poverty policy - it can be a matter of life and death. UNICEF estimates that, globally, 600,000 women a year die from problems related to pregnancy. Yet a close vote is expected in the U.S. House today over how quickly to release the international family-planning funds that Congress approved last fall. That's because the issue of contraceptive services has become mired, wrongly, in the politics of abortion.

The opening scene of Louis Rackoff's new production of The Tempest, on view through April 12 at the People's Light & Theatre Company, makes you eager to see what follows. On a platform at stage right, the magician Prospero is writing the story you're about to witness, complete with stage directions and introductory dialogue: Master: Boatswain, - Boatswain: Here, master; what cheer? And immediately we hear those words shouted as a storm breaks, hurling master, boatswain, and their assorted passengers about the stage while Ariel, Prospero's sprite, conjures the thunder by rattling a tin sheet.

When black-nationalist icon Mumia Abu-Jamal calls for revolution, there is little chance he is thinking of Narberth, a cozy enclave on the Main Line that is 95 percent white. What passes for social upheaval here is an influx of upscale professionals from the city, the subsequent opening of a French pastry shop, and, for the first time in 100 years, a Democratic majority on the Borough Council. Yet it is here that alleged loyalties to the left-wing "Free Mumia" movement have triggered what the mayor calls the worst political crisis in 20 years - one that threatens to take all the nastiness of the liberal-conservative culture wars to neighborly Narberth, which has a population of 4,200.

IT'S TAKEN a little more than 500 years to get to the root of William Shakespeare 's personality, but it turns out he was a bastard. According to a group of academics, the Bard was more Shylock than Puck, a ruthless businessman - hoarder, moneylender, tax dodger - who grew wealthy dealing in grain during a time of famine. You thought he just wrote plays, but researchers from Aberystwyth University, in Wales, argue that we can't fully understand Shakespeare unless we study his often-overlooked business savvy.

The end-of-term reviews of John Boehner's House speakership are in, and they aren't pretty. "The conduct of the Republican leadership was disgraceful, it was indefensible, and it was immoral. " "There was a betrayal. " "Disappointing and disgusting. " "It's inexcusable. " "Failed that most basic test of public service. " And this was from the Republicans . The spark: Boehner's last-minute decision to let the 112th Congress fade into history without a vote on the $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package for the Northeast.

Guessing what Bob Dylan might do next - and pondering why he does what he does - has been a time-consuming avocation for amateur Dylanologists for pretty much the entire half-century of his incomparably inscrutable career. On Monday, the mysterious man in the white boater hat played the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia, on a double bill that also featured Mark Knopfler, the former Dire Straits frontman who produced Infidels , Dylan's standout album from 1983. This date on the Never Ending Tour had a more compelling raison d'etre than most.

Opinions can be confoundingly divided between those who hear Metropolitan Opera performances at Lincoln Center and audiences at the high-def movie-theater simulcasts. Obviously, cameras rightly favor the singers over the sometimes questionable productions around them. But in the case of The Tempest , which will be beamed to six area movie theaters Saturday, the division may well be a question of urban tastes vs. others'. Or how many fools you're willing to suffer. The opera in question, which premiered in London in 2004, was created by Thomas Adès, who has been compared in stature to the great Benjamin Britten, often deservedly so. That's a lot of artistic equity, particularly in New York, where foreign composers can still be favored over domestic ones.

Strong acting and bold direction too often overshadow the work that a design team contributes to a play's success. In the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival's staging of The Tempest, the designers provide all the elements that make this production memorable. Not that the actors and director Jim Helsinger don't uphold the Festival's high standards. Greg Wood delivers a compelling, sympathetic performance as Prospero, the deposed Duke of Milan exiled for 15 years on a remote island with his daughter Miranda (the earnest and endearing Kelsey Formost)

Theater companies cut Shakespeare to reflect casting, to indulge shortened attention spans, or to center the play on a director's artistic vision or insight, among other reasons. Curio Theatre's current production of The Tempest proves that a bit of risk lies in any of these approaches. And, like any gamble, it also hints at large, if quick, rewards. The Tempest's traditional three-hour run time presents one of Shakespeare's most straightforward plots. Courtly treachery dethroned Duke Prospero (Brian McCann)

Near the end of The Tempest by William Shakespeare, the magician Prospero promises that he'll retire, that "deeper than did ever plummet sound, / I'll drown my book. " Starting with the 1623 First Folio collection of Shakespeare, where it is the very first play, books have brought The Tempest to millions and millions of people. And now . . . there's Shakespeare's The Tempest for iPad. Prospero would love it. It's like Ariel in a box. This app is, for one thing, an e-book, a carefully edited text of the play you can read just as in a book, 1616- or 1990-style.

"The Tempest" is another of Julie Taymor's bold reimaginings of Shakespeare, this time with a huge gender switch at the center. She takes Prospero, the marooned alchemist who lures rivals to his island exile, and turns him into Prospera, in the person of Helen Mirren. Does this complicate our interpretation of the text? I'm afraid so. As when, early on, angry Prospera inflicts punishment on her disobedient slave, Caliban. "For this, to be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps!"

It figures that Julie Taymor, theater magician of The Lion King , film conjurer of Across the Universe , Shakespeare interpreter who made her movie debut with Titus , would be drawn to The Tempest , the one about the sorcerer who unsettles the seas before settling scores. Boldly Taymor changes Prospero's gender, casting the magnificent Helen Mirren as Prospera, cast away with her daughter, Miranda, on a remote island where the sorceress rescues the sprite Ariel and enslaves the creature Caliban.

The artsy borough of New Hope, a flood-prone hamlet along the Delaware River in Bucks County, prides itself as a gay-friendly place of antiques dealers, collectibles retailers, restaurants, and other small-town merchants. So the opening in late March of a Dunkin' Donuts at the town's main intersection - the highest-profile retail location and just over the bridge from Lambertville, N.J. - has caused economic distress of sorts for the borough of 2,400 that swells with shoppers and motorcycle enthusiasts on nice-weather weekends.