The Tempest (Vol. 72) | Robert Smallwood (review date 2000)
Robert Smallwood (review date 2000)
SOURCE: Smallwood, Robert. Review of The Tempest. Shakespeare Survey 53 (2000): 244-73.
[In the following excerpted review, Smallwood calls Jude Kelly's 1999 production of The Tempest at the West Yorkshire Playhouse “deeply disappointing” save for Sir Ian McKellen's mesmerizing Prospero.]
From The Winter's Tale to The Tempest is not a long step in most chronological lists of Shakespeare's plays, but the symbolic significance of Sir Ian McKellen's journey from London to Leeds to play in a repertory season at the West Yorkshire Playhouse that included Prospero in a production of The Tempest directed by Jude Kelly was much commented upon by reviewers. The play was offered in a grim and ugly prison-cell set by Robert Innes Hopkins, draped at the back with polythene sheeting, chains hanging from walls decorated with a daily chalk-mark to record the long months and years...
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