A storming start
HOW do we stage the classics? Do we adapt, fillet and rewrite them for modern taste or do we respect their basic integrity? The joy of Deborah Warner’s production of The Tempest, which begins her tenure of the Ustinov Studio at the Theatre Royal, Bath, is that it is extremely imaginative, yet honours the text. It is much the most exciting Shakespeare production I have seen in a long while.
The first achievement of Miss Warner and her Austrian designer, Christof Hetzer, is to have convincingly created Shakespeare’s island in a tiny studio space. What we see is almost like an art installation, with bare wooden
