Affleck hasn't inspired the level of needling Eastwood did, and his comments, no matters one's politics, were certainly far less incendiary than Gibson's, so the appearance could end up a tempest in a teapot.
Prospero, drowning his book of spells at the end of "The Tempest," is understood to be a stand-in for Shakespeare, whose own magic ceases with the close of his final play.
But the end of "The Tempest" on Feb. 17 does not mean any suspension of the work of the busy Almeida, which has in recent years sent to New York productions like "Richard II" and "Coriolanus," starring Ralph Fiennes; Racine's "Britannicus" and "Phedre"; and Eugene O'Neill's "Iceman Cometh," starring Kevin Spacey.
These chapters, which come near the end of the Book of Job, are God's speeches to Job out of a tempest.
By the end of "Tempest," he has sung about murder and suicide in the grim love triangle "Tin Angel," a massacre in "Early Roman Kings" and the killing of John Lennon in "Roll On, John" (which, sentiment aside, is the album's clunker).
Think of Elizabeth Welch singing 'Stormy Weather' at the end of Jarman's Tempest, or the gay pride demos in Edward II.
"The waters here seem like a little bit of a tempest in a teapot," he said.
"It really is a bit of a tempest in a teapot," Mr. Wood said.
It presents itself as a cataclysm, but it's more of a tempest in a teapot.
"Thank God it didn't, because it was a bit of a tempest in a teapot," the archbishop said.
