Shakespeare's swansong, in which the humanist magician Prospero bids his art farewell, is a heady hunting ground for A-level students and psychoanalysts. But its imagined riches often prove too ethereal for the stage.
In Stratford upon Avon, David Farr's RSC production was hailed as the highlight of the company's 'Shipwreck Trilogy', which now docks briefly at the Roundhouse under the banner of the World Shakespeare Festival. Farr's sturdy vessel never sinks to the toe-curlingly stagey depths explored by the last major London production, Trevor Nunn's lumbering Ralph Fiennes vehicle of last year. But nor does it crest the imaginative wave suggested by Jon Bausor's planked stage, which rises from beneath the actors' feet to form a wooden breaker that serves as their backdrop.
The current RSC ensemble is a very mixed bag of character actors, who bring a lively, individual take on each role. For example, Jonathan Slinger is a striking, sinister Prospero, whose shuffling limp, smirk and vicious temper will recall his RSC 'Richard III' for anyone who saw it here. But 'The Tempest' is very much a director's play, requiring a bold visionary to unite its thin series of power struggles into something rich and strange.
Farr steers a subtle and often revealing course through the play – it's a nice touch to have Sandy Grierson's curious, enchanted spirit, Ariel, dressed in a sand-covered suit that makes him look like a gentler, better reflection of his master Prospero. But it's hard to make the magic happen on this bleached, wide-open thrust stage.
Harpies and goddesses dutifully descend to scourge the bad and reward the good, secured in safety harnesses. But the wondrous isle 'full of music' which Prospero's brutal slave Caliban dreams of, with its 'sweet sounds that hurt not', never quite rises from these watery planks – its perils and enchantments are lost, leaving behind a flatly delivered power struggle between Slinger's impressive Prospero and his tedious little enemies.