Unquestionably a play-going experience that you will remember for many years, Margaret Webster's production of "The Tempest" achieves magnificent effects of gravity and spectacle. Shakespeare's great comedy offers controversial problems in staging and interpretation; the current effort has successfully surmounted them with polish and understanding, for a result that will probably outrank "Othello" in popular appeal.

By casting Canada Lee in the debasing role of Caliban. Miss Webster has invited the criticism of all who profess an interest in the race question. The choice of a Negro for the role of the misshapen monster, half-human and servile, suggests sinister implications. Lee, however, said during a backstage interview that he has attempted to play down all social connotations in his part, and that he feels genuinely honored to follow in the footsteps of Sir Herbert Tree and other English actors who have played Caliban.

"Peggy and I had long conversations on this," he remarked. "This Caliban's a rebellious guy, and that's the idea people must get. I thought I could get away from the Negro angle of it. I hoped I could open up things for the Negro never opened up before."

Canada Lee's fiery Caliban is brilliant. When Lee cries, "Ban, Ban, Ca-Caliban, got a new master, got a new man," Act II reaches a moment of dynamic crescendo.

Arnold Moss is an impressive Prospero with an incisive voice that gives force and significance to some of Shakespeare's most moving poetry. France Heflin portrays Miranda with an air of innocent wonder that is truly beautiful. Ballet is not out of place in "The Tempest," and Vera Zorina's Ariel has exceptional grace, if not marked dramatic excellence.

Apt music by David Diamond and eloquent lighting by Elizabeth Hull point up the moments of highest dramatic import. A stylized setting by Eva Le Gallienne presents the entire island scene on one revolving stage and makes the most of the three unities in the play. A minor flaw is Motley's costuming, which is in the nineteenth-century tradition and does not match the rest of the production.

One of Harvard's more prominent literary critics has dryly commended that Margaret Webster apparently considers herself the owner of a private pipeline to the ghost of Shakespeare. She has been known in the past to doctor up her productions for modern consumption, and she has done it again by lifting Prosperous famous "We are such stuff as dreams are made of speech and using it at the final. It may not be true to art, but it is a highly effective outran. Miss Webster has used her pipeline well in "The Tempest." ssh