Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Richard "Caliban" Burton?

The Tempest. Dir. George Schaefer. Perf. Maurice Evans, Richard Burton, Roddy McDowall, Tom Poston, Liam Redmond, and Lee Remick. 1960. Videocassette. Films for the Humanities, 1983.

I have been studying The Tempest this semester; this led to my discovery of Richard Burton as Caliban in a 1960 made-for-TV (Hallmark Hall of Fame) production of the play. It certainly isn't great, but it isn't always terrible, either.

Burton's Caliban looks like a cross between Aquaman after a late evening and Charlie the Tuna (mascot of the Chicken-of-the-Sea brand of canned tuna fish—Starkist) after meeting up with some rough, angry dolphins.

But the voice—that amazing voice. That's surely something!


Links: The Film at IMDB.

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Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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—The Tempest