Jamie Lloyd’s The Tempest is the director’s first departure from anything that could be called theatrically accomplished in as many years. A tricky play at the best of times, Shakespeare’s notoriously poetical play (beautiful in the right hands) is reduced to a rambling cacophony of meaningless babble, as the actors vie for who can make their character more nonsensical and unimportant. It’s a woeful evening which is as boring as it is perplexing.

Film acting is famous for worshipping at the altar of the “do nothing” technique. In this production’s star turn as Prospero, Sigourney Weaver — the famous star of Alien 1 through 65 — does nothing. Prospero is normally a haunting figure, whose obsession and paranoia make him complex and dynamic, and whose subsequent realisation and redemption make him all the more richer. Well… Weaver does a lot of sitting. And then a lot of standing in one place, whilst people walk about her. Her voice never rises above the sotto voce. Weaver plays her character ‘arc’ as more of a ‘straight line’: from intriguing, to dull, to, “Oh no, she’s not going to do the whole thing like that, is she?” Star casting must come with a well-prepared star; Sigourney is a star, and she’s radiant on screen — but this is a star turn away from the very basics of the play. It’s idle and incomprehensible.

Mason Alexander Park gives us at least something to look at with his angel-of-death-styled Ariel. Selina Cadell is masterful with the verse as… Gonzalo… (it really was impossible to work out what was going on — even if you’ve seen the play). A permanent soundscape (Ben Ringham, Max Ringham, Mikey J) becomes distracting, and the island set (Soutra Gilmour) looks almost like the moon — a nod to Sigourney’s film persuasion? Who knows. The rest fade into the set like the grains of sand they stand on.

Lloyd is a masterful director, and it’s a shame that he’s fallen into the Tim Burton trap of style over substance. For a show that boasts a film star, he wasn’t tempted to get the cameras out again… a pity. We might have had something to distract us.

Playing at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 7 December 2024 – 1 February 2025. 64 performances only.