Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Jessica Hoffman, Richard Dufty, Neil Johnson.

There will always hopefully be adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays in one form or another, the 1960s television series The Forbidden Planet is one such form in which the son of Stratford play The Tempest has been looted and perhaps in some ways abused; it is the nature of things that great works, in some cases legendary, can either be taken down with a sense of cruel irony or, as in the case of This Last Tempest, just enhance what has gone before.

This Last Tempest is refreshingly simple and yet overwhelmingly and crushingly superb. It gives the audience that rare moment from story-telling, the chance to see what happens when the main body of work is over. In this case after Prospero and Miranda sail back for home, leaving the misshapen and abused Caliban and the sprite Ariel to digest and understand all that they have gone through and how they will now react to the sudden freedom imposed on them by Prospero’s departure.

Where This Last Tempest succeeds in absolute droves, aside from the spectral themes and unearthly like quality of the set, is to bring home the point succinctly and with great acting ability is the thought that violence and cruelty meted out is soon returned by the victim of such abuse further down the chain. The relationship of Ariel and Caliban is changed and the way that the company have put across the idea of what spiteful maliciousness means arguably puts the audience’s minds to what happens when independence is gained, be it in the form of personal freedom or in the wider context of a nation coming to terms with its own past in its political struggle. When the person you hate has left suddenly, where does that spiteful anger, which is still there burning away, go? It quickly turns inwards and against those which at one time may have been allies in the fight against vicious oppression.

The collaboration between Fuel and The Uninvited Guests has produced something truly magical and raised a thought on the very nature of cruelty, is it inherent in us all or is it learned? This Last Tempest quite rightly doesn’t offer a solution but has the audience thinking about one of the very base emotions that plagues humanity, that of post-cruelty revenge.

This Last Tempest is a beast of a production and yet contained so well within a 75 minute time frame. The performances by Jessica Hoffman as the spirit Ariel and Richard Dufty as the tortured Caliban are an absolute knock out and the music provided by Neil Johnson fits perfectly with the rage of oppression superbly well.

This Last Tempest is a perfect starter to the Unity Theatre’s spring season, dramatic, exposing, full of bitterness, recrimination and ultimately destruction, arguably a challenge to write and yet captured wonderfully. It would have possibly remained a hidden gem but some things are too accomplished to lock away out of sight.

Ian D. Hall