A NOISE WITHIN'S `TEMPEST' FAILS TO PROSPER.

Byline: Katherine Karlin Correspondent

A Noise Within specializes in bringing sturdy productions of the classics to the stage, and the current production of William Shakespeare's play ``The Tempest,'' while not breaking any new ground, delivers an eyeful.

``The Tempest'' is the story of Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, who practices the magical arts on an enchanted island where he raises his daughter, Miranda, and directs the efforts of a capable sprite named Ariel and an enslaved beast-man named Caliban. Prospero conjures up a storm that shipwrecks the Neapolitan king and his party on the island's shores - giving himself a shot at justice with his scheming brother, and Miranda her first peek at other human beings.

Sailing to an ``empty'' island and enslaving its subhuman inhabitants was much on the minds of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and in case there's any doubt about the play's context, costume designer Jennifer Brawn Gittings (this show's true star) dresses the island spirits in woven New World masks. Geoff Elliott's staging has these spirits appear and disappear magically, and as the chief pixie, Ariel, Michelle Duffy leaps about with athletic bravado.

The other leads don't fare as well. Robertson Dean's Prospero races through his speeches as if he had a boat to catch, and, as Miranda, Dorothea Harahan falls into the ingenue cliche of ending each line in a girlish keen. (There must be a school of Shakespearean acting somewhere that teaches young women to talk this way, but think about it - all that time in the wind and surf, with no one but her father to imitate. Wouldn't Miranda be a gravel-voiced baritone?)

However, the rest of the cast picks up the slack. The first new man Miranda spies is the prince, Ferdinand, and she lucks out: Jason Chanos cuts such a romantic figure even the most date-weary cosmopolitan would swoon. Ray Porter and Bo Foxworth are delightful as the drunkards who ply Caliban (the excellent Stephen Weingartner) with liquor.

Didactically, Elliott replaces Shakespeare's epilogue, in which Prospero renounces his practice of magic, with a wordless rapprochement between slave and master.

Wiser to let the play speak for itself.

THE TEMPEST - Two and one half stars

Where: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale.

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through May 21. Plays in rotating repertory. Call for specific days and times.

Tickets: $32 to $36. Call [phone], Ext. 1, or visit www.anoisewithin.org.

In a nutshell: A reliable 21st-century revision of Shakespeare's tale of enchantment.