It should have been magic but it fails to spark. Sigourney Weaver , an austerely commanding Hollywood star of the old school and a Broadway veteran, makes her West End debut for Jamie Lloyd , the visionary director who coaxed Nicole Scherzinger into Sunset Blvd and Emilia Clark into Chekhov. She’s playing Prospero at Drury Lane for 64 performances only, 67 years after John Gielgud played the part here and prophesied that after him this great theatre would be “lost to musicals” and never again host Shakespeare.
That Weaver’s Tempest is now taking place in a gap between the Disney blockbusters Frozen and Hercules should make it all the more special. But instead of lightning in a bottle, it’s a damp squib. It’s still extraordinary that London theatre in 2024 began with Sarah Jessica Parker in Plaza Suite and ends with Weaver, and that Sarah Snook, Lily Collins and Tom Holland graced our stages in between.
Glamour and sensation are vital parts of theatre’s ecology. There’s an undeniable thrill to the first sight of Weaver, tall and severe and spotlit, black silk ballooning and voiding behind her like a ship’s buffeted sail. She remains on stage throughout this pared-down version, often surveying the action from an upstage stool like a beady puppetmistress.
Lloyd’s production has an incantatory, dream-like quality. The cast wear headset mics and speak the verse with great clarity but little passion, their movements stylised and stiff: on the first of two press .
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