The Tempest review, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – There’s not a Shakespearean rule this production won’t break

The Globe’s new production is a radical reimagining of William Shakespeare’s late classic

'Mine own king': Faizal Abdullah as Caliban in 'The Tempest' (Marc Brenner)

Shakespeare's The Tempest famously takes place on a remote island, far from civilisation. But here, storied experimental theatremaker Tim Crouch (An Oak Tree, Adler & Gibb) has dragged his setting so many leagues away from traditional Shakespearean territory that it's basically in the Bermuda Triangle. It's unsettling, strange and bursting with a new liveness.

It feels like Crouch has taken it as a given that the audience broadly knows what happens in The Tempest (so hie thee to the library if you don't). So instead of simply telling the story, he's used the script as a starting point for a playful exploration of colonialism and storytelling. Usually, the island's inhabitants are demarcated by strong power dynamics, with two slaves and a daughter all in thrall to powerful Prospero. Here, Crouch himself offers a diffident, collaborative take on this patriarchal authority. The islanders divvy out Prospero's speeches like pirates sharing the booty, so battle-weary they no longer savour this rich language. As Caliban, Faizal Abdullah has a dignity that makes it clear this place is his, claiming his supposed master's words and interspersing them with proud passages in his own language. Sophie Steer's coltish take on Miranda reminds us that she's an awkward, homeschooled 15-year-old girl, not a passively beautiful prize. And Naomi Wirthner's Ariel is earthy, not ethereal, dismantling the magic that usually masks Shakespeare's uncomfortably colonial logic. These people are less enchanted, more maddened by the isolation of this island, muttering their lines like half-remembered old stories, forgetting where the line between self and other is.

When outsiders crash onto this island, it's utterly shocking. Crouch's delightfully cheeky stratagem is to reimagine Shakespeare's shipwrecked new arrivals as people who might just happen to be at The Globe on the night. Miranda's love interest Ferdinand is a daffy usher who clambers onto the stage, lanyard flapping. The villainous Antonia (Amanda Hadingue) is an obnoxious corporate supporter of the theatre who gets told off for filming with her phone, then crashes into a story she really thinks ought to be told in a more traditional fashion. And funniest of all is drunkard Stephano, played by brilliant physical comedian Patricia Rodriguez as a loutish Spanish student with a clanking rucksack full of supermarket cans. When the new arrivals enjoy a magical feast on the island, they chow down on a mini tub of Chocoholic Heaven ice cream, spoon in lid, instead of the usual faerie banquet.

The misbehaviour continues with Rachana Jadhav's maximalist set design, which is laden with puppets, masks and treasures – and secret disco lights, usually forbidden in this authentic candlelit space. There's not a rule that Crouch won't break here, as he confronts and reimagines everything that happens at The Globe, both onstage and off.

Enjoyably provocative though this Tempest is, it's also an odd, slow-moving thing to watch. The drunken subplot sings, while the main storyline mumbles, made unclear by halting line deliveries and the lack of a clear subversion of its neat, purity-obsessed final scenes. Traditionally, the play ends with Prospero renouncing his power and magic. Here, he's got nothing to give up. But there's still a certain pathos that comes with leaving this space, knowing it'll be quite some time before you see a Shakespeare play that hums with so much mischief and life.

‘The Tempest’ is at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until 12 April