'The Tempest' review — Tim Crouch brings quirky metatheatrical magic to his beautiful Shakespeare production

Read our review of The Tempest, now in performances at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to 12 April.

Summary

• Shakespeare's The Tempest comes to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
• Tim Crouch directs and stars as Prospero
• Sophie Steer is an expressively innocent Miranda
• Rachana Jadhav provides a wonderfully decorative set

Any production by Tim Crouch comes with the expectation of some quirky and metatheatrical magic, and that’s certainly what we get with his staging of The Tempest. When Crouch’s Prospero finally comes face to face with his wicked sister Antonia, the corporate sponsor playing that role (Amanda Hadingue) flounces off complaining that this production is a travesty and she’s going to write a letter of complaint to The Telegraph.

It isn’t possible to please everyone and it definitely helps to have prior familiarity with the play (especially for the opening section), but, like the venue’s recent production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it’s certainly different and has no hesitation in breaking the fourth wall.

In this deconstructed take, a cult-like group comprising Prospero (Crouch), the priestess-like Ariel (Naomi Wirthner), Miranda (the expressively innocent Sophie Steer), and Caliban (Faizal Abdullah) gather to recite the story that they have told among themselves many times before. When the shipwrecked Neapolitan characters (played by actors posing as audience members and Globe staff) wash ashore, it starts to be performed like a play rather than an incantation. Whether this represents the narrators’ wish fulfilment or the whole thing is an intellectual exercise, I couldn’t say.

Rachana Jadhav provides one of the most decorative sets we have seen in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to date, with a bohemian vibe that calls to mind Vanessa Bell’s Charleston Farmhouse with its murals and arty paraphernalia. A spinning cutout of a ship is at the centre and there are lots of moving parts for the masque sequence. The candlelight design by Anna Watson has real delicacy and the ethereal acapella singing by vocalists Emma Bonnici and Victoria Couper (compositions by Orlando Gough) offers the impression of the the auditorium being filled with exotic songbirds.

We’re constantly reminded of the artifice and ritual of theatre. Ferdinand’s (Joshua Griffin) punishment is to hold up the “Please turn off your phones” sign. Alonso (Jo Stone-Fewings), the king of Naples who had a hand in Prospero’s banishment but is sorry for his treachery, apologetically makes his way through the audience with his bike helmet on several occasions, and Tyrone Huggins’s Gonzalo is clearly relishing being the righteous voice of reason.

The cast’s multilingualism is highlighted by the drunken servants Trinculo (Mercè Ribot) and Stephano (Patricia Rodriguez), who become feckless students from a language school; the former is clueless and the latter is unashamedly chaotic. They are the production’s comic highlight and Caliban (Abdullah is Malay-Singaporean and the character, to Prospero’s annoyance, performs sections in his own language) picks up a few words of Spanish in their company.

For Miranda, the brave new world is the audience. For the audience, in turn, this production is a discombobulating experience in which it isn’t easy to keep track of all the narrative layers or to fully grasp what it means, yet it has a distinctive beauty and theatricality of its own.

The Tempest is at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to 12 April. Book The Tempest tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: The Tempest (Photos by Marc Brenner)