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The Tempest (Contemporary Legend Theatre)

Tsui Hark’s spectacular, operatic Tempest, co-directed with Wu Hsing-kuo (who also plays Prospero), is a mesmerising take on Shakespeare’s play. Available on the MIT Global Shakespeares site, and made available in its 2004 incarnation to delegates at the 2021 World Shakespeare Congress, it’s an extraordinary show of power as a truly magical Prospero co-ordinates an …

The Tempest (Nottingham Playhouse and Lakeside Arts Centre) @ Lakeside Arts Centre Car Park

Storms were scheduled for the matinee of Nottingham Playhouse and Lakeside Arts Centre’s outdoor Tempest, a co-production aimed at reintroducing family audiences to outdoor theatre as part of both venues’ reopening strategy; however, the sun shone brightly throughout. Martin Berry’s 80-minute production (also The Bardathon’s first bit of in-person Shakespeare for well over a year) …

The Tempest (Creation/Big Telly Theatre) @ Zoom

For most of the Covid-19 lockdown period so far, the need for ‘live’ theatre has been met by the generous opening of archival vaults by theatres around the world, allowing audiences to experience previously recorded live events from their own homes. The choice of many of these theatres to enhance the sense of live participation …

The Tempest (Donmar/Illuminations) @ BBC iPlayer

In the final entry in Phyllida Lloyd’s Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy, it is Harriet Walter’s turn to take the stand for a testimony at the start of the performance. The oldest prisoner at 66, ‘Hannah’ was the getaway driver for a politically motivated bank robbery which ended with two police officers dead. Refusing to recognise the …

The Tempest (Bilimankhwe International Theatre) @ Lakeside Arts Centre

Bilimankhwe’s latest project, The Tempest, is a potentially fascinating concept. Bringing together European and African artists, director Kate Stafford cast actors from Malawi and Zimbabwe as Ariel and Caliban, and a multi-racial British cast as the colonising Europeans, building into the production from the start a series of power relationships with the potential to comment …

The Tempest (RSC/Live from Stratford) @ The Broadway, Nottingham

Much has been made about the technical innovations of the RSC’s current production of The Tempest. Taking the (somewhat tenuous) premise that the play was designed as Shakespeare’s greatest experiment with the cutting-edge technologies of his own time, the RSC has partnered with Intel and Andy Serkis’s Imaginarium studio to create a series of avatars …

The Tempest (Gloucestershire Youth Players) @ The Tobacco Factory, Bristol

Gloucestershire Youth Players has been touring productions of Shakespeare for nine years, and its 2014 production of The Tempest marks the first time the ensemble has used a professional theatre, concluding its tour (which also took in the Dell in Stratford-upon-Avon) with two performances in Bristol’s Tobacco Factory. It’s a pleasure to see a youth …

The Tempest @ Shakespeare’s Globe

My first visit to Shakespeare’s Globe was a school trip in 2000 to see Vanessa Redgrave’s Prospero in a production that is still notable among Tempests I’ve seen for many reasons, not least an ethereal, androgynous Ariel and a complete, spectacular masque with goddesses appearing on high. Jeremy Herrin’s new production was the first I …

Isles of Wonder

There’s so much been written on the London 2012 Opening Ceremony that I certainly don’t feel the need to talk at length about the event. Suffice to say, I thought it was a bold and wonderful opening, celebratory while keeping its tongue at least partly in its cheek, self-deprecating and triumphant. The Bond/Queen and Bean …

The Tempest (Antic Disposition) @ Middle Temple Hall

Writing about web page http://www.anticdisposition.co.uk/productions/tempest/thetempest.htm I submitted my PhD on Wednesday after a very intense period of having my head down, during which I’ve not been looking ahead and organising theatre visits or review tickets. It was a delight, therefore, to have the chance to attend Antic Disposition’s current production of The Tempest during a …