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The Theatreguide.London Review
The Tempest
Donmar
at King's Cross Theatre Autumn 2016
Phyllida Lloyd directs a new all-female modern-dress Tempest to play
alongside revivals of her 2012 Julius Caesar and 2014 Henry IV in a short
repertory season in a temporary theatre behind King's Cross Station.
As with the other two, Lloyd imagines the play being performed by inmates of a women's prison, though as with the other two, any enrichment or new insights into the play are minimal, and the device still looks more like a feeble way of explaining away the all-woman cast, as if audiences really needed such an explanation.
Fortunately the frame doesn't get in the way too much, and can easily be ignored (which is what I suggest).
What we get is an intimate and frequently inventive production that finds most of what is great about the play.
Harriet Walter is a cold and officious Prospero until exactly the right moment – when Ariel reminds her of her humanity – to make the difficult conscious decision to forgive her enemies and rejoin the human community.
Sheila Atim gives Ferdinand more personality than is often the case, though Leah Harvey can't do much with Miranda, and Jade Anouka's Ariel is a surprising blank, with the actress never forging a real relationship with Prospero.
Sophie Stanton's Caliban is more comic than beastly, though not really much of either, but Stefano and Trinculo, usually the two most boring clowns in all of Shakespeare, are actually enjoyable thanks to judicious cutting and attractive underplaying by Jackie Clune and Karen Dunbar.
Prospero's masque is a high-energy mix of Shakespeare, pop music, dance and a lovely staging effect, and the audience is inventively conscripted into making Prospero's farewell to his powers a moment of real stage magic.
Gerald
Berkowitz
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