'The Tempest' review or 'Let your indulgence set me free.'

The Tempest 

11th April 2019, Zoom (online)

Written for The Guardian 

A storm is brewing. But this particular Tempest, from site-responsive specialists  Creation Theatre, is something special. Connected by the now ubiquitous video conferencing app Zoom, an online audience is helping to bring Shakespeare’s brooding play to life. Commanded by Prospero’s spirit Ariel, we rattle our screens, click our fingers and generally make some noise. We’re creating live theatre together and it feels a little bit like magic.

The show’s starting point is an immersive production of The Tempest that director Zoe Seaton staged in Oxford last summer, and some ingenious tweaks have been made to accommodate the new online setting. The actors perform in front of green screens, which are filled with a vast array of backdrops. Sometimes the scenery is downright silly (giant fish float past during the opening storm); sometimes it’s symbolic (Prospero stands in front of endless TV screens); and sometimes the company perform in front of tantalising fragments from Ryan Dawson Laight’s original set.

For a production pulled together in just two weeks, there are impressively few technical glitches. The sound occasionally drops out, or the “wrong” piece of action might be highlighted, but overall this is a confident production lit up by a great sense of mischief. Miranda and Ferdinand fall in love during a clever split-screen trick, Trinculo swigs wine from a magically disappearing bottle, and Simon Spencer-Hyde’s Prospero commands the action from a TV control centre, where he can change the backdrop with a simple flick of the switch.

The play has been drastically abridged but the actors, many returning to roles they played last year, lend their speeches real clarity. The online setting feels like a naturally confined context, and it’s the entrapped characters – including Itxaso Moreno’s Ariel and PK Taylor’s Caliban – that are most memorable. But it’s the audience who are the most excited and exciting characters of all. During what sometimes feels like a Shakespeare-themed episode of Gogglebox, spectators flash up on the screen whenever they get involved in the action. It’s such a joy to enjoy the show together. And that feeling of clapping together, while apart, at the end of the show? The stuff that dreams are made on.