Sigourney Weaver’s West End debut as Prospero evokes a storm of past Tempests

The Hollywood star is to appear at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in Shakespeare’s late play about sorcery. But what is the secret to playing the great magician?

I have one thing in common with Andrew Lloyd Webber: we both saw John Gielgud play Prospero at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1957. The big difference is that, since Lord Lloyd Webber now owns the theatre, he was able to suggest Shakespeare be revived at the Lane for the first time in 67 years in the shape of a new Jamie Lloyd production of The Tempest starring Sigourney Weaver. It is an imaginative piece of casting and set me thinking, as someone who has looked on a storm of Tempests, about Prosperos of the past.

The play itself is, as Anne Barton once wrote, “an extraordinarily obliging work of art”: it is open to multiple meanings and endlessly diverse stagings. Prospero can also be played in a variety of ways but, surveying the 40 or so productions I have seen, I have picked out four key interpretations. There is Prospero the magus, the impresario, the colonialist and the despot. The categories are far from being mutually exclusive. Indeed one sign of a great Prospero is the ability to combine them all but at least they give a handy guide to the role’s complexities.