RSC Review - a Tempest for our times has a strong message about our sensitive world

With the first ever female Prospero (Alex Kingston) and a concentrated theme about climate change and the ecology, it could have been seen as more of a modern message than entertainment.

But it was a delightful, forceful and powerful production – thoughtful, funny, spectacular, clever and brilliantly inventive by the ‘green-committed’ Royal Shakespeare Company.

In the aftermath of the storm conjured up by Prospero – formerly the Duke of Milan - we find ourselves on the shores of an island strewn with plastic detritus, washed up over the years. The calm brings with it survivors from a shipwreck including the King of Naples and Prospero’s own traitorous brother, Antonio (Jamie Ballard).

Living there with her daughter Miranda (Jessica Rhodes) and slave Caliban (Tommy Sim’aan), Prospero is also attended by her spirit-servant Ariel (Heledd Gwynn) who thwarts Caliban’s plan to get rid of his master/mistress.

Meanwhile the King of Naples believes his son Ferdinand to be drowned - but he has survived and falls in love with Miranda.

The drunken escapades of the courtiers Stephano with Trinculo (Cath Whitefield) and Caliban, in their failed bid to kill the King are hilarious.

All is well, the families are re-united, the magic has worked. Prospero fulfils her promise to give Ariel her freedom.

The Tempest is brilliantly directed by Elizabeth Freestone; Tom Piper’s set is magical with its ancient, cracked proscenium arch and its tangle of discarded nylon line, abandoned fishing nets, plastic bags and water bottles.

Costumes by Tom Piper and Natasha Ward, are either recycled or use a flurry of waste plastics, pressing home the message about the ‘disposables’ of our time.

The fragile ecosystems of our natural world are at the centre of this counterbalancing story of family relationships.

Amid a fantastic cast, highlights were the pioneering performance by Alex Kingston as Prospero, the wonderful talent (and beautiful voice) of Heledd Gwynn, Peter de Jersey’s powerful Alonso and the comedy of Simon Startin’s Stephano.

It was wonderful to take a guest of pensionable age who had last seen an RSC Shakespeare play at 16 and came away counting it an incredible theatre experience.