JOHN BARBER takes the Lewin theme to the Old Vic

CLAIRE scores a love point....PLAY: The Tempest; THEATRE: Old Vic

CLAIRE BLOOM astonished me last night. For the first time since her glorious Juliet two years ago she showed she was more that just a lovely girl.
They gave her the part of Miranda, a child who has lived all her life on a far-away island and then falls for the first man to be shipwrecked there. Frankly, a pretty empty part.
That Smile
Of course she looked heavenly- floating in misty net, flowers in her long auburn hair (a wig), flashing that blinding smile that lit up Charlie Chaplin's "Limelight" film.
And that, I thought, would be all. I have grown a little tired of soulful Miss Bloom, so maidenly, so soft...but lately, as empty as any Miranda.
But I did not understand Miranda till last night. The actress showed what a darling ninny she is. She bubbles out her innocent little heart with a rapture that makes you laugh and then choke back a sign at such dewy sweetness.
When she meets Ferdinand, she makes you see that in Miranda beats the heart of a gallery-girl. She falls daffily in love. As idiotically as any Johnnie Ray fan.
So many...
And at the end it was Miss Bloom's triumph that her last lines won fresh joyful laughter. For suddenly Miranda realizes that Ferdinand is only the first-boy-who-noticed-me. Seeing the stage fill with Men, she cries:-
Oh wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here?
How beautious mankind is!
And Shakespeare's dullest heroine becaem a girl I knew and loved. That comic creation apart, this production- by Robert Helpmann- is full of imaginative detail. Michael Hordern is tremendous as Prospero. Miranda's father. And Richard Burton, as the monster Caliban, speaks magnificently and at the end strides off carrying two men aloft like dumb-bells. But the dumb belle I loved was Miranda. All my early faith in Claire Bloom is reborn.

A Majestic Prospero.....By A. E. WILSON

With sonorous speech and majestic air, Michael Hordern as Prospero, evokes magic in "The Tempest," at the Old Vic. It is only fair to say that in these elaborate conjuring effects he has been considerably aided by producer Robert Helpmann, who has contrived much beauty in this hocus-pocus business with which the poetry of this much-neglected play is mingled.
In the gambols of nymphs and hobgoblins and in the Masque of the Seasons, in which Fay Compton sings as Juno, the imaginative touch of the ballet-master is notable.
It is altogether a lovely production, proving among other things that Richard Burton can pass from the melancholy of Hamlet to the grotesque antics of Caliban- a forbidding monster covered in hair and fish-like scales- with equal success.
Claire Bloom as Miranda and John Neville as Ferdinand make enchanting lovers, and Robert Hardy as Ariel flits about in little but spangles and tinfoil as the slave to Prospero's magic.