It’s sixty-seven years since a Shakespeare play was staged at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, yet from when the current fourth building on the site opened in 1674, for over two hundred years some of the greatest British Actors of their time played his works there. It was therefore a special night to see The Tempest return to this magnificent venue so lovingly and beautifully restored by Andrew Lloyd Webber for what should have been the theatrical event of the year.

There are three reasons you might have booked to be there, to see the Bard’s work on this magnificent stage, to see what Jamie Lloyd’s latest innovative reworking of a familiar title achieves and of course, to see genuine Hollywood A lister, Sigourney Weaver, make her West End debut. It ought to have been a magical combination, but it fails at almost every level and the result is dry and monotone, confusing and disappointing.

Jamie Lloyd’s vision for the play is to strip back to a bare stage with the rear wall and fly platform visible throughout and fill it with piles of dirt like a barren alien planet, rather than a magical exotic island, with shards of white light to pierce through the darkness. True, the billowing huge grey cloths do add an element of beauty and mystery to the opening scenes but against the opulence of the auditorium, the staging looks more suited to a black box studio space rather than the iconic Drury Lane. The action too is stilted and static with Weaver’s Prospero sat centre stage on a stool hardly moving, staring straight ahead as if concentrating hard on the verse without variation in tone or emotion. In the second half, she stands centre stage, hands limply at her side, while the rest of cast circulate around her, each coming into a spotlight to deliver their line. If this was intended to illustrate them coming under her control and orbit, it is a slightly irritating and clumsy device that prevents any connection between the characters.

The story is confusingly presented and told. Prospero is a former Duchess of Milan (pronounced Milaan throughout) shipwrecked on a remote island years before, who uses magic powers to conjure a storm that causes another shipwreck so she can wreak revenge on her former courtiers with the aide of her two servants, Ariel and Caliban. In the meantime, her daughter Miranda falls in love with one of the survivors, Ferdinand. There ought to be a pervading sense of magic, a touch of illusion, a sense of revengeful control and of desire to protect her young daughter, but we get none of that.

Ben and Max Ringham do their usual job as sound designers to create a discordant eerie soundscape that rolls along behind the action and Jon Clark’s scary white light dissects the stage with precision, creating the only drama of the production as it catches mounds of dirt or characters’ faces.

It is left to Ariel, an enigmatic Mason Alexander Park who flies down centre stage from the top of the proscenium arch, and Forbes Masson’s bizarre Caliban, burrowing out of and rolling bare chested in the mud, to create that sense of jeopardy and magic. They do successfully create strong powerful mythical creatures with booming voices and Masson does capture both the obsequiousness and double-dealing sides of Caliban. Their interactions with Mathew Horne as comical clown Trinculo and Jason Barnett’s drunken Stephano are the best scenes in the production as first, Ariel tricks Stephano by projecting his voice as Trinculo and then Caliban persuades them to murder Prospero. The interplay contrasts powerfully with the strange isolation of Prospero. The sudden blossoming romance between Mara Huf’s Miranda and James Phoon’s Ferdinand comes as a surprise as they stumble upon each other and yet there is no emotional engagement from her watching Mother as urges them to not consummate the relationship.

There is a great skill in delivering Shakespeare verse to engage the modern audience and all too often, actors do not get the rhythmic phrasing right but in this production, Selina Cadell stands out as Gonzalo in each of her speeches, entrancing us and selling the meaning with consummate ease and control.

One character says of Caliban: “This is as strangest a thing I e’er I looked on” and that could easily be applied to this production, which sits uncomfortably on the Drury Lane stage. Just as Andrew Lloyd Webber has so lovingly and wonderfully brought the Theatre Royal Drury Lane up to date while honouring and enhancing its history, if only Jamie Lloyd had pulled off the same trick with his latest production. Let’s hope he has more success with his second attempt, Much Ado About Nothing, in February, and that Tom Hiddleston watching on at the gala opening of The Tempest gets a chance to shine in a way that Sigourney Weaver does not.

** Two stars

Reviewed by: Nick Wayne

The Tempest plays at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane until 1 February 2025, with tickets available here.