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Landmarks: The Tempest

Ahead of a performance of the play on Radio 3, Philip Dodd presents a programme devoted to Shakespeare's The Tempest. With director Jonathan Miller and scholar Helen Hackett.

Philip Dodd presents a Landmark edition devoted to Shakespeare's The Tempest, a drama reimagined by artists from Purcell to Derek Jarman via TS Eliot, Derek Walcott and Thomas Adès.

The play continues to resonate: its phrases have infected the English language, Radio 3 have commissioned a new production as part of The Shakespeare Unlocked season and Danny Boyle will use the Tempest as a theme for the opening ceremony of this summer's Olympic Games.

The Tempest is the last play Shakespeare wrote alone, and was first performed in 1611. At its heart is the magician Prospero, the former Duke of Milan usurped by his brother now living on an island with his daughter Miranda and in command of two servants: Ariel, a spirit, and Caliban a monstrous man and previous occupant of the island.

In the studio to discuss this strange and compelling play are the writer and director Jonathan Miller who first directed the Tempest in 1970 and again in 1988, David Troughton, the actor who played Caliban in Sam Mendes 1993 production, the Shakespeare scholar Helen Hackett, composer and director Jeremy Sams who created a version of The Tempest story, The Enchanted Island, for the Metropolitan Opera and the writer Kamila Shamsie.

Producer: Natalie Steed.

Available now

45 minutes

Last on

Thu 3 May 2012 22:00

Broadcast

  • Thu 3 May 2012 22:00

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