The Tempest

The Tempest by William Shakespeare is one of the emblematic pieces of his literature. But Julie
Taymor comes with a new vision totally different from what we were used to. With a fabulous
scenography, super realistic costumes and exceptional frames, the clothes are 21st century but
the shipwrecked King of Naples and his entourage use sailing boats because wind is the only fuel
left. With references to “the quality of the climate” and “mutinous winds”, The Tempest sustains
director Elizabeth Freestone’s contemporary interpretation with little strain, helped by the
opening storm being made by man. Or, in this version, woman. Alex Kingston’s Prospero,
though still an exiled “duke” of Milan, is mother to a daughter. This affects the text, neutralising
Shakespeare’s “farther” puns and forcing recounts in Miranda’s lines about how many men she
saw before Sebastian, while Prospero’s rather creepy concern with the security of Miranda’s
hymen feels unlikely from a bohemian modern mother.

The Tempest is structurally messy. Some of Shakespeare’s most sublime verse – not just for
Prospero, but also Caliban’s “the isle is full of noises”, tinglingly delivered by Tommy Sim’aan –
brackets lumbering drunken comedy and discussions of Milanese and Tunisian successions.
Prospero, Ariel and Caliban are largely absent from these subplots and, with such a powerful trio
in those roles, the play’s unevenness is even more severe. Freestone addresses this by giving
Kingston or Gwynn extra lines or business and focusing, even in the farcical sequences, on
power relationships. Tom Piper’s set vividly flips from ecological junkyard dystopia to a verdant,
chirpy “brave new world” possible, it is suggested, if humanity and habitat can reconcile.

A very modern staging that is fundamentally true to the text and the RSC’s intellectual, rigorous,
clear-speaking traditions