THE TEMPEST Barbican Theatre

Gregory Doran, artistic director of the RSC, wanted to see what would happen to Shakespeare’s The Tempest if the very latest technology was applied to it. He enlisted Intel and Imaginarium to create a live fluid digital environment. The play still remains an insubstantial pageant. The high spot are the colours which fill the whole stage and cyclorama in the Masque sequence with the singing goddesses and the dancing nymphs and reapers. Simon Russell Beale has only one truly memorable moment. He roars with such pain when the sprite Ariel (Mark Quartley) shows he is more human, more humane, than Prospero has ever been.