The Tempest - Royal Exchange - 06/06/07 by James Ellaby

The Royal Exchange has produced many Shakespeare plays during its 30 years, so it is appropriate that this latest production continues their anniversary season with the help of several stars who have performed The Bard's works here in the past. A cast of Tom Courtenay, Brenda Blethyn, Robert Lindsay, Ben Keaton, Michael Sheen, Andy Serkis, Robert Glenister, Janet McTeer, Tim McInnerney and Pete Postlethwaite might be a bit too star-studded to get together on stage at the same time, but all are involved in this swirling maelstrom of a Tempest.

Most of them have pre-recorded lines from Shakespeare plays to act as the Spirits Of The Island, with their contributions played during the masque scene. It's a very nice idea - the Spirits Of The Royal Exchange, if you like - but to be honest not one that works particularly well, because the scene itself is a bit of a mess, while it's actually quite hard to pick out the famous voices. In the programme, director Greg Hersov admits that he struggled to work out what that scene is really for in the context of the plot, so at least he tried to make something special out of it.

This latest version of The Tempest departs from tradition by clothing its characters in modern dress, another decision which is slightly strange and not entirely justified apart from the fact that it means the bad guys of the story spend most of it strutting around in designer suits and shades like extras from Ocean's 13. The dialogue is kept the same and there seems to be no other modernisation (apart from the bodyguards' guns), so it seems like they may as well have kept the costumes from Shakespeare's time.

Fortunately, that's only a minor quibble in a production that is on the whole very successful. At the heart of it all is Postlethwaite as Prospero, the deposed Duke of Milan, exiled on a magical island with his daughter and bringing about his revenge upon those who betrayed him by causing their ship to be wrecked upon the island's shores. Many legendary actors have played Prospero down the years, but Postlethwaite makes it all look incredibly easy as he turns the character into a study in stillness.

While chaos swirls around him, not least in the very physical characters of Ariel and Caliban, Postlethwaite moves slowly and deliberately, delivering his lines quietly and yet getting more laughs than the actual comic characters. Only during the masque does he seem to break into a sweat, but it's far from a lazy performance, just a restrained and masterful one that unselfishly highlights the more expressive work done by the likes of Steven Robertson and Simon Trinder, who both bound around the stage as the aforementioned characters.

Hersov balances the three plot strands of The Tempest well, using the Royal Exchange's theatre-in-the-round layout typically effectively, and he balances the light and dark moments of the story equally deftly. While it sometimes threatens to spill over into farce at times (most notably the drunken antics of Stephano and Trinculo) and not everything that Hersov tries quite comes off, it's a brave and colourful production, anchored but not overshadowed by a majestic performance by the always reliable Postlethwaite.