[In the following excerpted review of The Tempest staged at the Restored Shakespearean Globe, Hornby decries the lack of adequate direction by Lenka Udovicki, but lauds Vanessa Redgrave's star performance as Prospero.]

The restored Shakespearean Globe Theatre in London continues to fascinate as a theatrical experiment, but, like so much classical theatre these days, it suffers from bad directing. Artistic Director Mark Rylance and his associates are mercifully not the kind of heavy-handed, gimmicky, “concept” directors who are so prevalent in America. Instead, they exhibit the opposite sin, laissez-faire directing, so loose and casual that you wonder if they bother to show up for rehearsals.

Most Globe productions have lacked focus and clarity. The actors are proficient, especially in their speech; one of Rylance's genuinely good ideas was to assign a “Master of Verse,” in charge of speech for each production, in addition to a director, or “Master of Play,” resulting in the best verse speaking you are likely to hear on any stage today. Unfortunately, however, the staging rarely matches the speech; actors wander around the huge Globe platform looking lost and confused, with no coherent groupings or patterns of movement. Blocking is so random that it can even vary from performance to performance, which would be disagreeable even in a naturalistic play, but for ritualistic, formal drama like that of Shakespeare and his contemporaries is a disaster. How strange that Rylance and his associates are so concerned about effective speaking and so casual about effective action!

The problem of underdirection was most apparent in the key production last summer, an eagerly-awaited version of The Tempest. For several years now, I have been urging the Globe Theatre Company to find a star for one of the great, charismatic Shakespearean roles. (Ensemble acting has been an ideal in the theatre for over a century, but, like it or not, many of Shakespeare's greatest plays were written not as ensemble pieces but as vehicles for a star, Richard Burbage.) Bringing in Vanessa Redgrave to play Prospero in The Tempest is not exactly what I had in mind. Yet Redgrave is undoubtedly a great actress, capable of performing any number of major Shakespeare roles, male or female, with panache. Physically, she can do anything. She is after all over six feet tall, and has a vigorous, low, resonant voice. There is a masculine edge to her acting, which in no way detracts from her sexual attractiveness to men (at least to me!), but which can easily be adapted to an out-and-out male role. Furthermore, although she holds some notoriously weird political views, she is extremely intelligent. For example, a few years ago she rescued Tennessee Williams' early work Not About Nightingales from oblivion, inspiring a superb production at the Royal National Theatre of a play that even Williams scholars had written off.

Her intelligence seemed to be dozing, however, when she brought in Lenka Udovicki, a colleague in Redgrave's Moving Theatre Company, to be Master of Play. (Even women are “Masters” at the Globe.) Redgrave was beautifully spoken, intense, rancorous, paternal, forgiving, and lyrical as Prospero, but she was sabotaged at every turn by Udovicki's slapdash production. The blocking was random and busy. The old stage axiom of never moving when someone else is speaking was broken constantly, so that whenever there was a set speech, like Gonzalo's ruminations on the “commonwealth” he would like to rule, it would be upstaged by actors wandering about like tourists in a cathedral. Similarly, the loud music in the opening scene, to create the effect of a storm, managed to drown out the dialog entirely. Furthermore, a lot of Udovicki's invented business just did not work. She had Redgrave twirl Prospero's magic staff, for example, which looked awkward even when she succeeded, but looked ridiculous when she dropped it, as she did twice during the performance I attended. I said that Redgrave can do anything physically, but she should probably avoid playing drum majorettes.

The costumes, however, were an even bigger disaster than the staging. Designed by Udovicki's compatriot Bjanka Ursulov (both are from the former Yugoslavia), they were not only ugly, but counter-productive. Kanunu Kirimi as Miranda, for example, wore a loose, baggy, beige ensemble that made her look drab and desexed. The effect was intensified by having her carry around a stuffed animal, so that she looked like a homely little child. When Ferdinand fell in love with her, he seemed like a pervert who lacked even good taste.

Similarly, Redgrave herself was dressed in random layers like a bag lady, with a black jersey, an old tweed jacket, a loose padded vest, baggy pants, and even gloves with the fingers cut off. In fact, Prospero specifically tells Miranda that when they were exiled, Gonzalo was able to provide them with “Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries” (I.ii.164). Costumes were always the most important visual element on the Elizabethan/Jacobean stage; here Shakespeare provides an excuse for Prospero and Miranda to look gorgeous. Dressing them like bums was typical of this jerry-built production, which was not only underconceptualized but uncontrolled.

Yet it was good, at last, to see an actor with genuine star power and attractiveness on the Globe stage. Redgrave can dominate a theatre, even when its stage is a big empty platform in partial shadow. Prospero must command. With his magical powers, he can control spirits, strike people helpless or put them to sleep, or order them about so that they must obey. With Redgrave, you never doubted his authority; she moves so well, with that long, smooth stride, and speaks with such clarity and focus, that her Prospero seemed magisterial. She was also particularly good in her fatherly relationship with Miranda. One of the ironies of acting is that the more intensely you can relate to other actors, the more focus you draw upon yourself. Great actors all have the ability to look their partners in the eyes, to talk directly to them, and to listen for every nuance of their speech. Redgrave was wonderfully absorbed in Kirimi's Miranda, and hence was wonderfully compelling to us.