One of Britain’s most visionary directors, Deborah Warner, kicks off her distinctively bristling programme at Bath’s Ustinov Studio. Opera, contemporary dance and cabaret will follow, but she opens with The Tempest. Shakespeare’s last full play is a meta-theatrical puzzle, and Warner lays out its unconsoling mysteries and honours its sheer strangeness.
After 16 bitter years in exile, Prospero, a usurped duke with magic arts, is given the chance to bring his enemies to his island (Warner largely cuts the chaotic opening shipwreck). His “rough magic” here seems rough both in a disarmingly non-illusionist sense and because it’s mostly used to mess with his victims’ heads. Christof Hetzer’s studio design has installation vibes – bare wooden boards against the walls, little boxes of pebbles and peat, a strip of video screen. This is an island of the mind.
