| Globe theatre, London
Sean Holmes’s gleefully comic take is a riot of holiday colour and fun, featuring luminous lilos, stag do bantz and a playful Prospero in eyewateringly tight trunks Comedy. Definitely a comedy. Academics have long agonised about how to categorise The Tempest but director Sean Holmes’s gleefully eccentric production is unequivocally comic. The great magician Prospero wears exceedingly tight bright yellow swimming trucks – and nothing else – for much of the show. Blow-up lilos feature heavily. Cheeky ad-libs and contemporary song choices, including a particularly raucous rendition of Three Lions, tear strips through Shakespeare’s text. It’s a rag-tag concoction but, in its best moments, it’s a riot. With palm trees wrapped around the pillars, a shiny barbecue and hotel-lobby orchestra perched on the balcony, Paul Wills’s design looks like Love Island crossed with a B&Q summer sale. There are nods to the dark TV satire White Lotus, both in Cassie Kinoshi’s spikily playful score, as well as the decision to dress island “monster” Caliban (often portrayed as a grunting savage) as a brutally overworked local staff member. It’s an interesting read, which lends Ciarán O’Brien’s Caliban surprising dignity and depth, but it’s only the beginnings of an idea that rarely works its way into the rest of the show. Shakespeare’s Globe, until 22 October. Continue reading... |
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