ABSTRACT
I report with joy that the watershed achievement of George C. Wolfe’s Tempest is to throw off the weary weight of Europe and break with all English styles. For the first time in my experience of Shakespeare in the Park, we have a glorious, unapologetically American production. In its blazing, inventive energy and melting-pot cross-culturalism—the vision of the Brazilian stilt walkers, the heat of the very un-English percussionists, the Indonesian puppets and timeless shadow plays—this is a Tempest utterly free at last of the traditionally English Shakespearean.
