SOURCE: Rosenthal, Amy. Review of The Tempest. New Statesman 132, no. 4623 (3 February 2003): 46.

In the following review, Rosenthal characterizes the dramaturgy of Michael Grandage's 2003 staging of The Tempest at the Old Vic in London as “disappointingly conventional and ponderous,” and contends that the production was only partially redeemed by its emotionally satisfying, if conventional, ending.

Michael Grandage's production of The Tempest, newly transferred from the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, opens on a bare, uncurtained stage with only a silky, greenish backcloth and a rope ladder suspended at the front. With the house lights still up, a crash of thunder silences the audience. The ladder begins to sway wildly, the backcloth becomes a heaving, swirling sea, shouting mariners arrive and a shipwreck is conjured before our eyes. Then Prospero appears and, with a dash of his staff, the rope ladder whisks away and the backcloth gathers into a twisting cyclone, which is...