Unforgivably, this is theatre as those who don’t go dread that it will be. Spencer Tracy’s famous dictum about acting states that all one must do is to know one’s lines and not bump into the furniture. Director Jamie Lloyd, the arch minimalist whose bag of tricks is looking worryingly empty now, provides no furniture for Weaver to bump into. No wonder his actors huddle together front stage centre, as if seeking refuge from lurking monsters in the cowering expanses of the Drury Lane stage.
James Phoon, as Ferdinand, and Mara Huf, as Miranda, in ‘The Tempest’ at Theatre Royal Drury Lane (Photo: Marc Brenner)
Kenneth Branagh’s bizarre Flintstones-era King Lear last year was a recent low point in celebrity Shakespeare outings but this is infinitely worse. Those unfamiliar with the play will be bamboozled from start to finish, such is the lack of clarity and conviction with which the narrative treated.
Daisy Edgar-Jones is glorious in the unflinching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Read MoreThe Tempest contains some of the longest and least amusing drunk scenes in theatre history, but given that we are already out of our minds by this point they barely impact upon us. Mathew Horne, who will surely have a better time of things in the Gavin and Stacey special on Christmas Day, at least injects a bit of liveliness into Trinculo’s delivery. There is one small but welcome outbreak of tenderness between Miranda (Mara Huf) and Ferdinand (James Phoon), and Mason Alexander Park looks like an extra from Cabaret (in which they starred last year) as an ethereally androgynous Ariel.
To 1 February (thejamielloydcompany.com)
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