Review: The Tempest, Grays Inn Walk

Written for Time Out

Mick Gordon's open-air production for the Oxford Shakespeare Company cores out Shakespeare's swansong into a light and breezy piece of comic whimsy. The result might more aptly be titled 'The Temp-ish'.

Despite the production's lightning quickness, Gordon has managed to condense the breadth of themes neatly by offering a collage of clashes. Here shipwrecked aristocrats are cocked-hatted colonials, Michael Hadley's gently officious Prospero is biblically cloaked, while Sophie Franklin's Miranda is a punkette in pink meringue.

Clever doubling sees a seven-strong cast navigate the play's concurrent plots, but also emphasises the oft-underplayed critique of masculinity.

Nick Lloyd Webber's music and a weighting towards the play's comic elements keep this fun and folksy, but there's a sense that individual endings aren't deserved. Ariel no more earns his freedom than the villainous Antonio warrants his punishment or the lovers their marital bliss.