Sigourney Weaver is Alien to Shakespeare

theatre royal drury lane

Garnering some of the worst reviews of the year, The Tempest has turned out to be a disappointing start to Jamie Lloyd‘s Shakespeare season at the mighty Theatre Royal Drury Lane. All eyes were on Sigourney Weaver (still seen as Ripley from Alien by many) but her flat delivery of the lyrical language was decried by the critics. As if that wasn’t enough, the barbs thrown in the direction of Jamie Lloyd’s stark production suggest a rare failure after his string of hits ranging from his 2018 Pinter season to Evita, Cyrano, The Seagull, The Effect and most recently Sunset Bouevard. Views were mixed on the matter of Soutra Gilmour‘s dark set and Matthew Horne‘s comedic turn but everyone praised Mason Alexander Park as Ariel.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

‘Weaver is not a masterful Prospero: her verse delivery is flat and featureless, which leaves a vacuum in this key role,’ said Arifa Akbar in her Guardian (4★) review. However, there were compensations: ‘The swirling black emptiness around the set looks fathomless, blasts of light bring tremendous visual drama, and sheer silken sheets spanning the length of the stage are used in simple but sensational ways. The production creates its own dark magic with large-scale grandeur.’ She concluded, ‘It’s all thoroughly odd, but in an audacious and enlivening way.’

Neil Norman in the Express (4★) said ‘Weaver is a supremely confident presence, dressed in grey and white and delivering Prosero’s great speeches with a clarity of diction that is characteristic of the entire production.’ As for the production, it ‘rarely falters throughout’. He expanded: ‘Lloyd’s vision is spectacular but spare’ and ‘Soutra Gilmour’s design is simple but epic’.

The Telegraph‘s Dominic Cavendish (3★) found, ‘Weaver fails to weave the requisite magic.’ He spoke of ‘much woodenness in her delivery – an even-keel approach that verges on the automaton.’

Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out (3★) said about the Hollywood star: ‘She’s not a good verse speaker, delivering everything in a concerned-mom monotone that fails to hold this big, weird play together.’ but he did call the production ‘an awesome spectacle’.

The Standard‘s Nick Curtis (3★) too was disappointed: ‘instead of lightning in a bottle, it’s a damp squib.’ He declared, ‘An interesting thematic suggestion that Prospero’s island is a place of rebirth gets lost amid the sonorous intonation and tedious comic relief. For all its stark visual boldness, this is a curiously old-fashioned take.’

Sarah Hemming in The Financial Times (3★) described how ‘Lloyd and lighting designer Jon Clark sculpt the space, sending the characters hurtling across the stage in a glowing burst or silhouetting them stock-still on the set’s dark hills.’ However, ‘human intricacy and intimacy often elude this staging. There’s a lack of jeopardy and it’s curiously unmoving’.

Patrick Marmion for the Mail (3★) commented that Jamie Lloyd’s ‘insistence on using mics not only makes everyone look like they’re lip-synching, it paradoxically renders some of the Bard’s finest verse in muttered whispers.’ He was disappointed with the use of the star: ‘I’d like to have seen Weaver’s emotional range stretched a bit more than simply deploying her as an alpha-female observer on her own story. It’s a bit like renting a vintage Cadillac and using it for the weekly shop.’

LondonTheatre‘s Olivia Rook (3★) found Sigourney Weaver ‘too detached to have much impact, often simply speaking the lines rather than offering up a new interpretation.’ But she did like the look of the production: ‘Soutra Gilmour’s grey-scale, futuristic, moon-like set, with mountainous rock face and rubble, is visually striking and, once lit by Clark’s lighting, aptly captures the hostile environment of this rough, wild island. There’s little substance in this production, but plenty of style. It’s worth a trip just to see Gilmour’s beautifully bleak set.’

Dave Fargnoli in The Stage (3★) described ‘a terse, unfussy minimalism to the performers’ delivery that builds an effectively eerie atmosphere, but leaves Shakespeare’s poetry feeling underserved, its meaning adrift.’ He liked ‘Soutra Gilmour’s bold design (that) sets the action in a bleak, blackened wasteland, where shreds of white smoke crawl across an undulating landscape of glimmering volcanic sand. He found Sigourney Weaver’s ‘delivery flat and frequently tentative’.

For Alice Saville in The Independent (3★), Sigourney Weaver ‘doesn’t have the charisma to anchor this fanciful story’. She comes up with an interesting analogy for the setting: ‘This island feels like a queer fetish club at 4am, where time stands still’. Well, now we know what Ms Saville does after a hard night’s reviewing!

Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (2★) called it ‘misconceived and under-achieved’. She continued, ‘The unremitting mood of darkness is not leavened by any move towards hope or redemption. There is no sense that this is a play about revenge and forgiveness; the tone is unremitting.’

Clive Davis in The Times (2★) wasn’t impressed by Ms Weaver: ‘she turns in a strangely impersonal performance’. As for the production: ‘as the colours of the backdrop and Gilmour’s costumes are so muted, Lloyd’s vision of a magical kingdom soon grows monotonous’.

BroadwayWorld‘s Alexander Cohen (2★) didn’t get on with it. ‘The three times Oscar-nominated Hollywood veteran mumbles through Prospero’s lyricism with barely a glint of an attempt to grasp the coiled intricacies of the language’ he said. And the production? ‘Lloyd’s chuck-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-works vision doesn’t help. The auteur’s trademark visual austerity strips the island of specifics, with piles of black ash flecked by glaring crepuscular light forming a planetary hellscape.’

Heather Neil at The Arts Desk (2★) said ‘Lloyd and his designer Soutra Gilmour have conjured a strange, otherworldly, hilly, inhospitable place’. ‘There’s not much evidence of the “sweet airs” Caiban speaks of’, she added. She said she ‘would have preferred a more actively engaged Prosopero’. Like nearly all the other critics, she praised Mason Alexander Park’s Ariel as ‘the central energetic force throughout’.

Fiona Mountford in the re-branded i paper (1★) called it a ‘dismal non-event of a production’ and awarded a dismal one star. She said Weaver’s ‘wooden delivery never wavers from a tone of blank meditation’.

Critics’ Average Rating 2.7★

Value Rating 16 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)

The  Tempest is at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane until 1 February 2025. Buy tickets from the theatre

If you’ve seen The  Tempest at the Theatre Roayl Drury Lane, please add your review and rating below