Cheerless and fussy: The Tempest, at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, reviewed
The Tempest is Shakespeare’s farewell, his final masterpiece or, if you’re being cynical, the play that made him jack it all in. Some actors admit that it can be hard to stage and dull to perform. What is it exactly? A children’s fairy tale and a soppy romance with snatches of drunken farce and political intrigue. Quite a muddle. The setting is famously eccentric. Shakespeare whisks the audience away from reality and drops them in a magical kingdom where a sanctimonious wizard rules over a population of goblins and fairies. The overbearing soundtrack keeps coming up with new ways to irritate your eardrums Some directors try to correct the Bard
