�"THE TEMPEST" (from the Royal Shakespeare Company yearbook 1982/83)

How to share the direction of The Tempest with Prospero? The perennial problem was resolved in Ron Daniels’ production, thought Michael Billington, by never letting us forget that "this is a play about power": a sense of conflict, so often conspicuous by its absence, was thus generated through the "internal struggle" between Prospero’s own "omnipotence and humanity". In what he proclaimed to be the only "first-rate revival of this stubbornly undramatic play" at Stratford since Peter Brook’s production 25 years ago, Billington welcomed a nicely-kept balance between magic as a metaphysical concept, and magic as theatrical spectacle. Ned Chailled agreed:

Prospero’s island is no simple beach or abstract wonderland, but the bleached wreck of Prospero’s ship. Maria Bjornson’s design has an eloquent moment of imagery at the very beginning, when the tempest-tossed ship bearing Prospero’s enemies is broken apart in a flash of lighting to reveal Prospero standing on his own wreck, his staff raised to the storm. Miranda’s horrified realization that he has called the storm on another ship gives way to his explanation of their exile, and it is Derek Jacobi’s slowness to shake off the effect of such a mighty act of magic that gives impetus to his finely calculated performance.

This welcome for Derek Jacobi’s Prospero – the most "vital and thrilling" interpretation since Gielgud’s, according to Billington – was widely shared. "It takes him as an actor beyond the skilled charm that got him through Benedick and Peer Gynt", claimed Robert Cushman: now, he sensed "deeper tones in his voice, more iron in his soul".

Technically commanding, he is psychologically very acute. His Prospero is a man moving from one loneliness to another. His magic powers give him a relationship with Ariel that inspires affection on both sides, but no contact: the desires to have freedom and to bestow it become ambiguous things.

Christopher Edwards agreed that there was "real affection" between this Prospero and Mark Rylance’s Ariel – a "delicate, high-voiced presence who glides over the set, constantly seeking out the highest points on which to perch, like a cat". And he liked the "neat touch" at the end, "when Prospero summons him, and Ariel fails to appear; a sense of loss flickers across Derek Jacobi’s face even as he knows that Ariel will perform the last task".

J.C:Trewin, veteran of good many Tempests, was all ready to censure Ariel’s quintet of lookalikes, fearing the "sort of thing that can discredit modern Shakespeare". But he allowed them to have been "used judiciously on magical duties", while Ned Chaillet saw them as part of a pervasive visualization of magic that in style came half way between carnival and opera:

The spirits conjured by Prospero to celebrate the betrothal of Miranda and Ferdinand are all glitter and light, all colour and hooped skirts with collars of shining wire and air. The beastly terrors invoked and unleashed on the conspiracy of fools led by Caliban are misshapen demons with glowing eyes, preceded by the baying skeletons of dogs. Ariel is a silver sprite with a tangle of red and blue veins leading up his body to blue hair mottled with pink.

Those attendant sprites also served as a sort of backing group (the Full Fathom Five, as Robert Cushman dubbed them), notably in the sea dirge, which was, Cushman felt, "beautifully set by Stephen Oliver and...as beautifully sung". Chaillet preferred to single out Oliver’s setting for "Where the bee sucks" – its "sinuous melody accompanied by solo bassoon", with Mark Rylance’s Ariel sounding "almost like a counter-tenor".

At this point a canopy of golden foliage invades the stage and Prospero stands quietly on the sidelines to inspect the pleasure he has perpetrated for both the young lovers and the audience. It is a wonderful scene, the high point of the evening.

As for the lovers, in the Ferdinand and Miranda of Michael Maloney and Alice Krige "for once", according to Michael Billington, we had a couple "so keen to make it in the sand that Prospero’s restraining paternal hand has some point". Ned Chaillet detected a more dutiful daughter in this Miranda –

a girl who displays the careful tutelage of her father’s care, innocent and yet emotionally wise. It is well that her father taught her so carefully, for the men of Mr Daniel’s Milan and Naples are dangerous, filled with an intense quality of real life.

That quality slightly muted for Eric Shorter, who couldn’t understand why they should all have been "wearing full armour at sea when Prospero decided to sink them". But Christopher Edwards thought that the "low-life business" had been brought "beautifully to life",

in particular, in Christopher Benjamin’s drunken butler Stephano, played here with just the right measure of affected, genteel solemnity, and offering the perfect comic parallel to Robert O’Mahoney’s serious conspiracy being hatched elsewhere on the island. There’s also a brilliant piece of pantomime with the four-legged monster (Trinculo and Caliban under a cloak) which had both adults and children in fits.

Edwards also found a telling contrast between this Caliban and our first glimpse of Miranda as "a wild thing"– "bare shouldered, her hair in long braids" :

But the true perspective of nature and nurture comes into focus when Bob Peck’s monstrous Caliban climbs, hairy hand first, out of an underground pit. Like Miranda’s, his hair is braided, but it is a filthy matted mass and, along with his beard knotted and studded with beads.

Michael Billington considered Peck’s Caliban "very good" – a "prognathous, Rasta-locked, power hungry figure who, at the last, lurks behind Prospero as he waits to reassert his natural clime to the island".

And the comedy scenes come off well because they mimic the main plot, with Christopher Benjamin’s Stephano, a gruff, Pozzo-like toper, relishing the sway he holds over Alun Armstrong’s surly, working-class Trinculo.

Not only the low-life, but the music and spectacle besides were well-knitted into the interpretive whole, as expressed in Billington’s climatic pun:

All too often The Tempest degenerates into a colourful island fling. Thanks to Mr Daniels and Mr Jacobi, it here becomes something much more powerful and moving: a fable about the redemption of a super-hero who tries to hold the mirror up to Nietsche.