The Mad Professors

The Tempest
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Observer

Back to the mad-scientist theme in, of course, The Tempest. This has good comedy from Christopher Benjamin and Ian Talbot, too little of anything else from Bob Peck as Caliban, and unusually lively court scenes, with especial credit to Jeffery Dench’s cynical weakling of a Sebastian. 

The main merit of Ron Daniels’s production, though, is the frame it provides for Derek Jacobi. Flames fly up at the end of Prospero’s renunciation speech, and very impressive they are, but they are only appropriate because they correspond to the sparks that have flown from Mr. Jacobi. Giving up his magic costs him, but then so, earlier, has the exercise of it. 

Mr. Jacobi is now a superb verse-actor on four counts: tonal colour, lucidity, architecture, and characterisation. He builds a pleasing relationship with Alice Krige’s Miranda (faint echoes of early Judi Dench), an angry and passionate one with his enemies; while with Mark Rylance’s Ariel he forges a master-servant bond, funny at times, but woundingly painful when broken.