The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's more difficult plays and one should take care in distinguishing the virtues or flaws of the play from those of a particular rendering. This undoubtedly is quite a fine production with notable performances. While I single out Louis Hillyer's Caliban and Derek Jacobi's Prospero, more important is the effect of a tight, seamless whole, woven by the entire troupe. The advantage of having had a previous run in Sheffield is a benefit that will not be lost on London audiences. Each of the actors working with one another, combined with the simplicity and effectiveness of the staging, make the work flow so smoothly that one's attention is entirely absorbed and the play appears to be over too soon. 
      While The Tempest is technically a comedy, it has little of the humour of Much Ado about Nothing or Twelfth Night. The theme is one of a past injustice done and of just retribution. Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, has been usurped by his treacherous brother, Antonio, aided by Alonso, the King of Naples and his brother, Sebastian. The wrongdoing and its subsequent rectification are not resolved as dramatically successfully in The Tempest as in another technical comedy, The Winter's Tale. Is it a fault of the play or the production that the rightful ruler of Milan, Prospero's show of mercy to his usurping brother and his accomplices seems less motivated than it should be? Prospero, or at least Jacobi's Prospero, appears to be a soft touch on the meting out of punishment. 
      The actors deliver their lines lucidly, giving nuances to oft-repeated phrases: Jacobi's deliverance of "we are such stuff as dreams are made of" is a case in point where the line is a cliché for saying that characters in a play are creatures of fiction; Jacobi's deliverance, in addition, instructs that each of us is indeed, in real life, a creature of the narration we construct about ourselves. 
      Thanks to the actor Louis Hillyer and the director, Michael Grandage, there is a particularly interesting Caliban. Credit is due both for what they abstain from doing as well as what they do; unlike the regular treatment of Caliban as a grotesque of a sort (not even literally human) Caliban has been made a more recognisable being. Shakespeare's reference to him as a monster is taken only metaphorically. Caliban's rage at Prospero for supplanting him as ruler of his island is paralleled by Prospero's own anger at being robbed of his Milan. Caliban's worship of the newcomers visiting the island matches Miranda's naive elevation of Fernandez (it's love at first sight) and later the King of Naples' group ("O, brave new world that has such people in it".) Hillyer's performance is exceptional. He brings a very special quality of animation to his Caliban. 
      This Tempest should not be missed. Whence comes such another?
Alex Orenstein