"What they say is real Shakespeare, with some reasonable trims and modifications. And with one notable exception, they speak the language beautifully, finding nuances of humor, feeling and fantasy packed into the prose and poetry of the script. Presiding over a motley, talented assembly is Helen Mirren as Prospera, the former duchess of Milan and Ms. Taymor’s most provocative and persuasive act of revision. Switching the gender of Prospero — an aging wizard who is also his author’s last and fondest alter ego — is more than a gimmick. When the character is a woman, a central relationship in the play, between the magician and her doted-on child, Miranda, sheds some of its traditional, patriarchal dynamic. Instead, a mother-daughter bond fraught with envy, protectiveness and identification blossoms into something newly rich and strange. … The Tempest is, perhaps above all, the portrait — the self-portrait — of an artist on the verge of saying farewell to his art. By abjuring her “rough magic,” burying her magician’s staff and drowning her book of spells, Prospera elects to live in a world without supernatural possibilities; having demonstrated the power of art, she accepts the limits of that power and forsakes hubris for humility, something Ms. Taymor seems unable to do."

"Russell Brand - Trinculo"

"Alfred Molina - Stephano"

"Alan Cumming - Sebastian"

"Chris Cooper - Antonio"

"Reeve Carney - Ferdinand"

"Tom Conti - Gonzalo"

"David Strathairn - Alonso, King of Naples"

"Felicity Jones - Miranda"

"Djimon Hounsou - Caliban"

"Ben Whishaw - Ariel"

"Helen Mirren - Prospera"

"I didn't really have a male actor that excited me in mind, and yet there had been a couple of phenomenal females — Helen Mirren being one of them — who [made me think]: "My God, does this play change? What happens if you make that role into a female role?" … We did a reading to see if it was just a gimmick, and it worked so beautifully. The potential was there to enhance the play for people who know it — and for others it will just seem natural."

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bed fellows."

"This island is mine!"

"I will plague them all, even to roaring!"

"Be cheerful sir, our revels now are ended."

"We are such as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep."

"Michael Dudikoff - Boy on bus"

"Eugene Butler - Marty"

"Larry Barton - Harry"

"Lance Guest - Gordon"

"Dinah Manoff - Libby Tucker"

"Ann-Margret - Steffy Blondell"

"Walter Matthau - Herbert Tucker"

"Grandma, do you like the Phillies against the Dodgers tonight?"

"Martin Ferrero - Monte Del Rey"

"David Faustino - Martin"

"And Flequs spoke out of his chinkle chankle and he said "Behold, I give you Equus, my only begotten son.""

"It WAS sexy! That's what you wanted to know, isn't it?"

"Double your pleasure, double your fun with double good double good double mint gum."

"How can I? In an ultimate sense, I cannot know what I do in this place, but I do ultimate things, irreversible things and I, I stand in the dark with a blade in my hand, striking at heads, I need, more desperately than my children need me, a way of seeing in the dark; what way is this? what dark is this? I cannot call it "ordained of God" — I cannot go so far. I will however, pay it so much homage. There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out."

"Why me? Why me? First, account for me."

"Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created. You won't gallop anymore, Alan, the horses will be quite safe. You can save your money each week and change that scooter for a car. You'll spend glorious weekends grooming that. You'll pop round to the betting shops and put fifty pence on a nag, forgetting they ever meant anything more to you than bearers of little profits and little losses. You will, however, be without pain; almost completely without...pain.. and now... for me... it never stops... the voice of Equus, out of the cave."

"Alright, I take it away, what then? He'd feel himself acceptable, what then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply re-attached, just like plasters stuck on other objects we select? I mean, look at him! My desire might be to make of this boy an ardent husband, a caring citizen, a worshipper of abstract and unifying God; my achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost. I heal the rash on his body, I'll erase the welts cut into his mind by flying manes and when that's done I'll put him on a metal scooter and send him puttering off into the concrete world and he'll never touch hide again. Hopefully he'll feel nothing at his fork but approved flesh, I doubt, however, with much passion!"

"Know that, when Equus leaves — if he leaves at all — it will be with your intestines in his teeth — and I don't stock replacements."

"All right! The normal is the good smile in a child's eyes. There's also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills, like a god. It is the ordinary made beautiful, it is also the average made lethal. Normal is the indispensable murderous God of health and I am his priest."

"Worship all you can see, and more will appear."

"That's what his stare has been saying to me all this time: "At least I galloped — when did you?""

"Forgive me. I'm not making much sense. Let me start properly, in order."