Review by stevemyrgy

Having seen eight different movies and three filmed stage versions of this play, I have to say that none of them got close to the visceral experience of Harriet Walter enunciating the timeless phrase 'we are such things as dreams are made on'. Her timing, excruciatingly expressive facial gestures, and pregnant pause between this line, its follower ('and our little lives are rounded with a sleep') and the lines which follow returning her from her contemplation of the eternal to to interpersonal here-and-now, truly allowed me to sense how Shakespeare was here summing up his career with a summation as inspirational as it is deflating.

That this expression of pure artistic eloquence followed an exquisite effect of images projected with and through a series of balloons that then, as the full house lights harshly come back on, Prospero violently pop, is a testament to Phyllida Lloyd's mastery of staging.

Without a doubt, the most moving and passionate Tempest I've seen. Combining as it does magic, true love, political conspiracy, family revenge and slapstick humor, this is far from an easy play to pull off as an integral dramatic whole. The masterful direction of Lloyd, the passion brought to her acting by Walter and the talents of all the other players managed, at least for me, to do just this.