User Reviews

Having seen eight different movies and three filmed stage versions of this play, I have to say that none of them got close to the visceral experience of Harriet Walter enunciating the timeless phrase 'we are such things as dreams are made on'. Her timing, excruciatingly expressive facial gestures, and pregnant pause between this line, its follower ('and our little lives are rounded with a sleep') and the lines which follow returning her from her contemplation of the eternal to to interpersonal here-and-now, truly allowed me to sense how Shakespeare was here summing up his career with a summation as inspirational as it is deflating.

That this expression of pure artistic eloquence followed an exquisite effect of images projected with and through a series of balloons that then, as the full house lights harshly come back on, Prospero violently pop, is a testament to Phyllida Lloyd's mastery of staging.

Without a doubt, the most moving and passionate Tempest I've seen. Combining as it does magic, true love, political conspiracy, family revenge and slapstick humor, this is far from an easy play to pull off as an integral dramatic whole. The masterful direction of Lloyd, the passion brought to her acting by Walter and the talents of all the other players managed, at least for me, to do just this.

Before the play starts, Harriet Walter recalls her character Hannah. She has been in prison for 35 years. She was a getaway driver for a politically motivated robbery where two policemen died. She was sentenced to life with no hope for parole leaving her newborn baby behind.

At the age of 66, this prisoner is Prospero not trapped in an island but in a cage.

Again the staging is sparse, the pop up theatre is a prison. This Tempest has lots of rubbish and plastic waste, like it is making a point of the pollution floating in the oceans.

The lords of Milan come into the prison in sharp suits. The prison will be their new island and they soon take on prison attire, Ariel reflects on their previous plush lifestyles while Caliban collects the plastic waste and plastic bags.

As in the other two plays in this trilogy, the play breaks out from Shakespeare. The cast burst into song, you get a line or two from the musical 'Chess' elsewhere you get a burst of rap, some modern dance.

The Tempest was the one easier to get to with its all female cast, maybe because Helen Mirren has already done a film version where she played Prospera.