Revisiting the Script: Shakespeare On Stage in 2012

According to the reviews David Farr's The Tempest in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre was the most successful item of a RSC shipwreck trilogy in which the same personnel also performed The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. According to the director: "The Bastard is a classic independent warrior: irreverent, funny, aggressive. The play's initial focus on the campaign in France was seen in front of a patterned staircase topped by a huge cluster of balloons (a notice warned playgoers with allergies that "This production contains loud noises, smoke effects and latex balloons") and climaxed with a huge wedding party with music and plentiful drinking. [...]for the director's concept to work, the often-quoted final lines of the script ("Nought shall make us rue, / If England to itself do rest as true" - 5.7.117-18) cannot be taken at face value.