Hopes were high for star theatre director Jamie Lloyd’s latest celebrity-led production, said Fiona Mountford in The i Paper. The 2,000-seater Theatre Royal Drury Lane – London’s oldest and grandest theatre – hadn’t staged a work by Shakespeare since 1957, when John Gielgud played Prospero in a production of “The Tempest” for Peter Brook; so news that Hollywood star Sigourney Weaver was to make her West End debut there, in the same role, created quite the buzz – and seats were priced to match. Alas, the production, which opened just before Christmas, is a turkey.
‘Prospero makes next to no impression’
Weaver’s “wooden delivery never wavers from a tone of blank meditation”, and those unfamiliar with this magical play will be “bamboozled from start to finish”, owing to the lack of “clarity and conviction” in this dreary, underlit staging.
“Dressed down, like a crew member from ‘Blake’s 7’ hired on a minimum wage, this Prospero makes next to no impression at all,” said Clive Davis in The Times. In fact, Weaver’s performance is so stiff and dull, you think an Alexa-type smart speaker “could have breathed more life into the lines”. Still, there are other performances that almost right the listing ship. A semi-naked Forbes Masson, sporting what looks like a black nappy, makes a convincing, melancholic Caliban. Mason Alexander Park, hoisted high over the stage, is a thrilling Ariel. And Selina Cadell is so assured as Gonzalo, you can’t help wishing that she’d been cast in the lead.
‘Bleakly spectacular’ staging
I rather liked this “Tempest”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Admittedly, Weaver’s “featureless” delivery leaves a “vacuum” in the central role. But the show’s visuals – inspired, perhaps, by the actress’s sci-fi filmography – are dazzling.
Designer Soutra Gilmour has conjured a “bleakly spectacular” staging, agreed Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. Prospero’s island is at times a “barren Dune-like landscape strewn with black rubble”, at others a “mysterious, otherworldly oasis”. But it’s not enough to save a lacklustre, “unmoving” production, in which the star turn has gone awol and Shakespeare’s rough magic is “lost at sea”.