At the grand old age of 83, and after some 60 years in the theatre, Richard Eyre has finally made his Stratford debut. And with this spectacular production of “The Tempest” – which also marks the return of Kenneth Branagh to Stratford – the venerable director has opened his account in considerable style, said Michael Davies on What’s On Stage.
He brings clear storytelling and a brisk one-hour-each-way running time to Shakespeare’s famously dense text, while leaning into the visual grandeur of its undiscovered island full of “masques, magic and monsters”. Eyre also fills the play with music: Branagh’s Prospero doesn’t so much conjure the storm as conduct it.
This is an “enchanting” and visually thrilling staging, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, “with something of the children’s magic show to it”. Initially, Branagh “follows in the vein of his fast and furious” Lear, performed in the West End in 2023. He “seems to be speeding through the part, rather than inhabiting it”; he’s “too puckish, almost larky”.
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But as the evening wears on, “there’s growing depth and poignancy to his performance”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. “We feel the struggle in him as he watches the sexual attraction between his daughter Miranda and Ferdinand (played with lovely, clumsy humanity by Ruby Stokes and Fred Woodley Evans), and wrestles with his desire for vengeance over those who have wronged him.”
If you’re still smarting at the memory of Sigourney Weaver’s appalling verse-speaking in the West End, said Clive Davis in The Times, you’ll certainly enjoy Branagh’s command of the Shakespearean text. What you don’t glimpse, from this lithe 65-year-old, is “the vulnerability” that some have found in the character.
The evening’s other star is set designer Bob Crowley, whose backdrops draw on the tropical fantasies of the painter Henri Rousseau. Much of the action takes place on a circular platform, and he “conjures up shimmering washes of gold that evoke the most perfect sunsets”.
Until 20 June; Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.
