The sublime and the ridiculous sit side by side in Adrian Noble's revival, a production modelled on one he staged at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2011. It's a mostly handsome show, played out on bare, bleached boards with the aid of a large billowing piece of blue silk that is neatly manipulated to create a sail, a canopy for betrothal, a stormy sea and even a bedsheet for the sleeping king.
The evening is filled with the sound of the sea, and Shaun Davey's score combines a mood of something regal with some more ghostly and magical touches. A chorus of sprites – who on occasion resemble ministering nurses in a sanatorium – are a nice touch. They observe the action and respond to it with little claps and laughs like a ghostly audience. At the interval, they stare out into the auditorium intently, as if they can sense but not quite see us.
So far, so good. But the good – most notably Tim Pigott-Smith's Prospero, who begins as a a control freak but belatedly discovers he has a heart after all – does battle with the dull and downright odd. There's a puppet masque, which includes an unlikely homage to Riverdance, but the puppetry is scrappily done, and Mark Meadows's sweet-voiced Ariel suffers the indignity of having to lumber around on stilts for no good reason. Noble goes strong on the pageantry in the play's second half when he would be better simply telling the story. The production lacks a sense of humour, too, which means that Geoffrey Freshwater and Mark Hadfield, both fine actors, don't quite make the impact they should as Stephano and Trinculo.
Matt Ryan's heavily tattooed Caliban is compelling, full of suppressed violence, and Iris Robert's Miranda is a sheer delight: direct, unfussy and full of wonder at discovering that the world is a far bigger place than she ever imagined. There are some great moments: when Prospero hugs his usurping brother, the latter responds with all the flexibility of an ironing board. The production needs more detail like this, and less concept. In the end it works its magic not because of how it looks, but because of the quiet, unshowy power of Pigott-Smith.
