[In the following excerpted review of the 2000-2001 staging of The Tempest at Stratford, Jackson describes the unique design of James MacDonald's production, finding the director's overall interpretation “innovative” though somewhat lacking in impact.]

The Tempest, directed by James MacDonald, played in The Other Place from 30 November to 6 January before a national tour to twelve venues. The designer, Jeremy Herbert, arranged the space with seating on three sides of a white platform. Its surface consisted of three gentle undulations curving up at the back to a white screen, with a narrow platform crossing it about ten feet from floor level and allowing entrances and exits above from either side of the rear wall. A bronze gong was hung to one side of the black backdrop, a thunder sheet on the other. Before the play began, the audience was confronted by this bare, white stage, with a single open book placed toward the back of the lower platform. As the house lights dimmed, a circular monochrome image of waves was projected on the backcloth. The tempest gathered in force, and this projection was replaced by stormy breakers, which presently expanded to fill the whole of the space. Subsequent visions of the island consisted of such images (whether projections or simply colored lighting) melting into one another. They reached their climax during the masque, when a fan of peacock feathers to accompany Juno's arrival succeeded a rainbow for Iris and giant close-ups of waving wheat for Ceres. When Prospero conjured the “elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves” in 5.1, he was lit with a convergence of yellow, green, and red spotlights. He broke his staff, and the lighting suddenly snapped to plain white.

The “noises” and music of the island, performed for the most part by the black-clad “spirits,” complemented these simple but richly atmospheric projections and lighting effects. Their mouth-music for the songs (composed by Andrew Gough) included syllables of the lyrics divided between four voices as accompaniment (so that the texts seemed to emerge from the chanting), rhythmic hums, and vocalises, supported by the occasional use of percussion instruments. It was they who supplied the sounds of the storm, which for once could be keyed perfectly to fit round the lines spoken by the actors on board the ship. The spirits were the ever-resourceful stage-attendants for Prospero's island theater. When Ariel, winged and taloned like a harpy, trampled the banquet, reducing what seemed like a baked Alaska to gray ashes, two spirits with brushes and another with a dustpan tidied up. At the end of the masque, the dance of nymphs and reapers was executed only by Miranda and Ferdinand: they wore gold shoes provided by the spirits, who guided their feet by performing the steps themselves with two similar pairs of dancing shoes on their hands. Ariel himself, a slim young man in black trousers and jacket, moved simply and swiftly but with no “dance” mannerisms. When he appeared as a nymph of the sea, he donned a silver lamé off-the-shoulder shift evoking the Supremes, but otherwise he was a gentle, unelaborated spirit with a gentle, high tenor voice. Observing Prospero's fond gaze on Ferdinand and Miranda, his “Do you love me, master?—No?” was wistful rather than rebuking and Prospero's answer was simple and sincere: “Dearly, my delicate Ariel.”

Caliban (Zubin Varla) was “deformed” in the sense of having a discolored skin, dotted with blisters and scabs, with a curious mark resembling a brand on his back. His posture, leaning forward precipitously from the hips, suggested urgency and pain rather than “savage” qualities. As with several Stratford predecessors in the role, his speech was not so much obscured as overarticulated, giving the sense of a carefully learned language forced through an ill-adapted mouth. This strained eloquence was an effective counterpart to the speech of Philip Voss as Prospero, whose musical voice and careful nuancing of every phrase—although sometimes a little too elaborate—seemed to come from a precision of thought and a lively apprehension of the sensuous quality of words. When Prospero interrupted the masque, he was not at all melodramatic but certainly “vexed.” The postcolonial dimension of the play, while not heavily underlined in the multi-ethnic casting, was clearly enunciated in the “court” scenes (with the king and the duke dressed like Commodore Perry) and in the comic politics of Caliban's subjection to Trinculo and Stephano. When Ferdinand took over Caliban's log-bearing task, he also began to resemble him physically—stripped to the waist, his body discolored by the labor and his posture lowered to a crouch by his burden. Miranda chided Ferdinand mildly over the chess game and wondered sweetly at the brave new creatures of the usurper and his accomplices. This was a satisfying, innovative, but not aggressive production of the play.