Theatre Review: The Tempest with Sigourney Weaver at Drury Lane London

This ‘switch and bait’ production might make its money and that can’t be bad for theatre right? It’s getting bums on beautifully upholstered seats. You might enjoy this if you are a tourist – sort of we went to London and got this lousy T-shirt with Sigourney Weaver‘s face on it. More especially if you don’t understand much English, so you can blissfully ignore the tortured verse and prose and focus on the theatrics of it all. It’s another attraction on your trip to West End London – big name star, glossy posters, tickets for £250 – what’s not to admire?

This shipwreck’s survivors have made land, barely. There’s quite a lot going on and the audience seem gripped, star power or just stunned.

Walking in through the splendour of the theatre, it’s eerily quiet in the packed auditorium with only the resonance of a radio being tuned, then it’s Shakespeare’s three claps of thunder and there she is, spotlit on a stool.

Our star.

Variously in a spacey puffa gilet with bleach white shirt and then in a sleeveless East Hampton housecoat as magic mantle – suburban beach taken to the moon.

The prompt on this show must be made of stern stuff, the faltering, stuttering lead with hardly a hint of iambic pentameter in ear shot.  It’s almost a staged reading and it seems cruel not to hand Sigourney the script, of which she has a third of the total lines.  She has the most beautiful voice and is miked up so you don’t miss a single breath, or sadly a stumble. The dreaded mid-Atlantic ‘Mi-larn’ (for Milan) grates but she doesn’t fluff the “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”  – you can hear a pin drop as the audience are willing her on.

This is a great actress, mesmeric with mega watt presence on her London stage debut, but she’s a little out of her depth with Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I half imagined a Steadicam circling her as if she was rehearsing for what would then be cut from the many takes to create a perfect performance. I flinched toward the end when she suddenly raised her hand and shouted, the only time I’d seen emotion. When she convulses, it’s more Ripley’s Believe It or Not! waxwork automaton, malfunctioning headed back to the Alien nest  for a reset. I didn’t get the sense that the learned character Prospero has powers to control the weather, people and hypnotise – but come to think of it, perhaps she was going after the latter.

There were two shows taking place, one Prospero reciting the lines, sotto voce and the other a rather thrilling full-throttle Shakespearean tragicomedy.

Vomit-inducing bawdy laughs are to be had with court jester Trinculo (Mathew Horne) and sidekick Stephano (Jason Barnett).  Cal (Forbes Masson) is a hoot as the monstrous, boot-licker done up in S&M garb, possibly off to Torture Garden later. James Phoon as Fernando – aka handsome prince – appears charmingly and Miranda (Mara Huf) in a hoodie and gladiator Uggs, plays the daughter well. Another beautiful voice comes from Selina Cadell, as Gonzalo, big bowed and would make a good stand in for Prospero. Stand out, however, and surely to be award-winning is Mason Alexander Park as high flying, adored Ariel. Their magical powers can raise sleepers from their graves and so they must do for those drifting off in the stalls.

The screen-less set is a marvel, the diaphanous disappearing sails, the moons of which I could wax on lyrical, the dissonant filmic score, and studied costumes, all make this a powerful director’s vision production. There is atmosphere on that vast stage, with characters oft sitting quietly on the dunes, the shipwrecked royals circling what must be a fire and the lighting creating  vast deserts of depth with pin spots on characters you can hear but can’t quite place on the stage.

A special commendation has to go to the glorious  £60 million  renovation of Drury ‘The Lane’ Theatre. Andrew and Madeleine Lloyd Webber  have given us a peek into what it must be like in their own richly carpeted stately home. Decorator-punched velvet cushions, Willow Kemp crockery for afternoon teas with fun, embroidered napkins. Walls are glowing with Pre-Raphaelite pictures by Edward Burne-Jones, even a stray Canaletto and new works by Maria Kreyn for a cycle of monumental paintings based on Shakespeare. Lloyd Webber’s commission  was “‘Maria, I want you to make this work dangerous and apocalyptic, with your soul on the line.”

If only he’d said that to director Jamie Lloyd.

It’s a very gentle car crash rather than a total shipwreck. Prospero forgives all, as we must too.

MANinLONDON at The Tempest by Maria Kreyn at Theatre Royal Drury Lane 2024.