The short-term forecast is for a storm – or maybe a squally shower – of Cop26-inspired Tempests. On 7 November, BBC Radio 3 is fielding a soft-spoken Ian McDiarmid as Prospero in Shakespeare’s island reverie and here in Glasgow, as the climate delegates assemble, director Andy Arnold has put together an 11-strong, all-female Tempest, led by Nicole Cooper.
Neither production overstates the eco connections, each preferring the story does its own work. This is a play about a man-made weather event leading to a bunch of Europeans taking over a foreign territory, exploiting it, then getting out again. The latter idea is picked up by Arnold, who leaves Itxaso Moreno’s athletic Ariel and Liz Kettle’s proud Caliban forlorn and abandoned at the end of the 90-minute show. They have been used and discarded, the dream-like visions of their visitors a lingering nightmare for them. [READ MORE]