Sigourney Weaver, the latest in the line of high status screen stars to be wooed to the stage by director Jamie Lloyd, may for ever be known as Ellen Ripley to fans of her defining science fiction role on film. She is certainly in alien territory here, and plays Prospero with the steely-voiced conviction of a commander giving urgent instruction to an interstellar space crew at imminent risk of attack. She is making her West End debut in this late Shakespearean drama as its gender-reversed central sorcerer and usurped Duchess of Milan, and the remote isle of sounds and sweet airs which she sequesters appears to be floating in deep space.
The dark hills and rubble on Soutra Gilmour’s set look lunar, the booms and bursts in the black background sound like explosions of interplanetary matter (the sound design and compositions are by Ben and Max Ringham) and the lights (designed by Jon Clark) look like the blazing beams of UFOs.
