It begins with an almighty bang that makes you leap out of your seat, as Prospero stage-manages the storm. But nothing that follows in Michael Grandage's intelligent and bracingly swift production is quite as electrifying as those opening seconds.
The evening is curiously lacking in magic, and Derek Jacobi as Prospero never has a moment quite as memorable as his first, when, like a conjuror, he stills the storm and simultaneously reveals that he and Miranda have made their home in a crumbling proscenium-arch theatre. Yes, all is not just illusion, but theatrical illusion, on this cool sea-green isle.
Jacobi, as you would expect, speaks the verse magnificently, but without any of the fussy grandeur that you so often get with great Shakespearean actors. He makes everything he says sound both conversational and sublime, as if iambic pentameter was the most natural way of speaking in the world. I could listen to him all night.
But listen is the point. You could enjoy this performance just as much with your eyes shut, because Jacobi's stage presence is strangely lacking. A lot of the time he is like a little elf lurking around the back of the stage. Generally, when watching Shakespeare, I wish that the actors would act less; here I kept wishing that Jacobi would act just a little bit more.
There are other compensations: Daniel Evans's Ariel is a toothy charmer who, with his two camp sidekicks, seems to have wandered in from a Matthew Bourne production. Claire Price's strapping and irresistible Miranda hasn't a drippy bone in her body, as, like everyone else on this isle, she seeks her own personal liberation.
And, although the production eschews the more obvious anticolonialist interpretations in favour of its theatre-within-a-theatre thrust, it has moments of startling illumination. When Prospero and Miranda talk to Caliban, it is like watching the west talk to the third world, such is the mixture of well-meaning condescension on one side and baffled resentment on the other.
In the end this production is enjoyable, without being particularly memorable. If that sounds grudging, it is because from this team you expect nothing less than the very top of the range.
· Until March 15. Box office: 020-7369 1722 .
