This is getting boring. Another great night out at Shakespeare North. Sigh.

The food writer Jay Rayner used to say he got his best copy and his biggest readership from his worst reviews. His 2017 piece on Le Cinq, the Michelin three-star restaurant in the Hotel George V in Paris, in which he excoriated everything from the décor to the food and the prices, especially the prices, made him a culinary hero around the world. Except in Paris, of course. But there will be no excoriation in this review. In fact, don’t bother to read any further. Just buy some of Shakespeare North’s reasonably priced tickets, and go.

What you will find is the Handlebards, with whom this is a co-production. What’s in a name, as somebody once said? This is the first production the company has done specifically for buildings. Its work previously has been Shakespeare in the open air, and, as an ecologically conscious company, the players go everywhere, with everything, by bike. Brilliant, if not immediately obvious. And they do handle the Bard extremely well.

There’s a funny post going round Facebook which reduces the plots of 26 of Shakespeare’s plays to one sentence. This is The Tempest: wizard dad traps everyone on an island to teach them manners. It’s a little more complicated than that, but it’s pretty much how it turns out. Prospero, Duke of Milan, buries himself in his books leaving his brother Antonio to run his estate, and is surprised when he finds himself and his three-year-old daughter Miranda on a barely seaworthy boat, heading for a remote island, while his brother takes over as Duke. Cut to 12 years later and Prospero, now a proper mage, causes a storm which scuppers a ship carrying Antonio, King Alonso and Gonzalo, Prospero’s once faithful servant, and the crew, onto the island. And so it begins.

Readers lucky enough to have read my recent review of The Grand Hotel Babylon at the New Vic in Stoke will know how fond I am of small casts playing lots of characters, as much for the pleasure of the skill in the storytelling as the performances, and so it is here. It would be unfair to single out a performance as they are all excellent, but Lucy Green as Prospero manages to be both commanding and ridiculous, funny and pathetic, and almost all at the same time. And she has a terrific reveal at the end.

Scott Brooks as Ariel, Prospero’s spirit servant bound to him by charms, agilely expresses obedience and frustration in equal measure, and he makes some beautiful music which entrances both the marooned seafarers and the audience. The others, Ross Foley, Princess Khumalo and Meredith Lewis, have three parts each, and they do a great job of separating the characters, even if the changes happen on stage and in an instant – beware, an unsuspecting member of the audience is roped in to be King Alonso, perforce.

Foley gives an angry and terrified Caliban with huge green claws, a pompous and bewildered King Alonso, and, in a split second, his own younger brother, a rather severe Sebastian; Khumalo is a fine Miranda, 15-years-old and full of wonder having never seen another human being except her Dad, and falls precipitately in love with the first boy she sees, Alonso’s son Ferdinand, a somewhat overwhelmed Where’s Wally character beautifully played by Lewis. Khumalo also gives Antonio, the usurper and chief baddy, and Stephano, one of Shakespeare’s clowns. Lewis gives Gonzalo, the nearest thing to a goody, and Trinculo, the other clown. Together they are a delight.

This hilarious great night out is directed with outrageous panache by Nel Crouch, and designed by Ellie Light whose costumes are a treat. A school party of teenage girls seated near me sat with their mouths open half the time, as though to say, ‘gosh, are you actually allowed to do that in public?’.

My regular readers know that I often have a quibble. I usually find it takes me 15 minutes or so to get my ear tuned to the verse, but not here. It was clear and direct from Prospero’s opening speech. On press night I did find Ariel a little hard to hear when he had his back to me, but that’s probably about getting used to being in the round.

If you’ve read this far, Jay Rayner eat your heart out. Now go and buy some tickets. There were some small children in the audience who got most of it, I think, and loved the physical stuff, but might need help in the wordy bits. And if you haven’t been to Shakespeare North before, this show is the perfect introduction, using all of its potential as a fully in-the-round playhouse of the kind Shakespeare’s own company used to employ.

By Chris Wallis, Theatre Editor

Main image: credit Patch Dolan

 

The Tempest is at Shakespeare North until October 25, 2025. For more information, click here.