Photo: Marc Brenner

The latest in Open Air Theatre Regents Park’s series of re-imaginings for an all-age audience, is very freely reworked. And this time it is co-produced with Unicorn Theatre which makes a lot of sense. The show is effectively a tuneful mini opera (music and lyrics by Harry Blake) glued together with short passages extrapolated from Shakespeare and made as coherent as possible with skilled adaption and addition. It runs for just 75 minutes.

Chiara Stephenson’s set is a delight. The playing area is surrounded with the sort of rubbish which washes up on beaches so there’s a quietly understated environmental message especially as Ferdinand’s later task is to clear it up rather than to move logs.

The set uses a double revolve with a sort of makeshift hut in the centre which starts gauzy for the storm and then becomes Prospero’s cell. The roof of it provides a second playing space. The outer ring has stylish trees which can be climbed and which rotate at magical moments.

It takes plenty of vision – and some extraordinarily quick costume changes – to do The Tempest with a cast of six but Jennifer Tang makes it work smoothly enough. Ashley D Gayle, for instance, who gives us a fabulous angry, oppressed but funny Caliban, is also a delight as the unpleasant plotter, Antonio as well as singing a jolly song in a very glitzy get up (costumes by EM Parry – good) as one of the three masques summoned to formalise the big betrothal.

Juliet Agnes’s spectacular, larger-than-life Ariel in a sort of white space suit is arresting and she and Gayle lead the audience participation with verve.

Mark Theodore is the most impressive looking Prospero I’ve ever seen. He’s a big, statuesque man with a deep voice and he finds real gravitas and authority in the role – as well as some rueful humility and wisdom at the end.  It is, after all, ultimately a play about forgiveness and redemption.

I also enjoyed Finlay McGuigan’s  diffident, wet Ferdinand which contrasts well with his bumptious Trinculo. Daisy Prosper is a suitably bouncy, impressionable Miranda discovering the hormones she wasn’t previously aware of and Alice Keedwell is convincing as the bereaved mother, Alonsa. and funny as Stephano although I was puzzled by the drink she and Trinculo share and feed to Caliban. From my seat in row Q it looked like a bottle of Windowlene.

They are, in short, a talented bunch although some of them should not have been cast in singing roles. The best tune in the show is Ban, Ban Caliban.  I’m sure, though, I’ve heard it before or something very similar. It’s in a minor key, off the beat, uses a descending chromatic scale and becomes an instant  earworm. I heard several people, grown ups as well as children singing it as they left the theatre.

Maybe I’m literalist but I was a bit anxious about Prospero running a computer on electricity generated by Caliban on a bike. It seems implausible. And where, on this remote Island is getting his wifi from? Satellite? Never mind: magic innit. And  of course it’s fun to have his “books” represented by an iPad which he also uses to instigate his spells.

I think this re-imagining could have used just a little more Shakespeare (although all the famous speeches are in) and a little less innovation which can sometimes stray into gimmickry. I could see no sense, for example, in the pair of Deliveroo drivers bringing food, for example, although it’s good for a laugh.

In general though, it’s a decent and enjoyable show.

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  Miranda (Daisy Prosper). Photos: Marc Brenner

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  Stephano (Alice Keedwell) and Caliban (Ashley D. Gayle)

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  Caliban (Ashley D. Gayle)

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  Antonio (Ashley D. Gayle) and Alonsa (Alice Keedwell)

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  Miranda (Daisy Prosper), Prospero (Mark Theodore) and Ferdinand (Finlay McGuigan)

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  Alonsa (Alice Keedwell), Ariel (Juliet Agnes), Miranda (Daisy Prosper) and Prospero (Mark Theodore)

• First published by Sardines https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-tempest-14/