If I had to choose one word to describe the ETG’s adaptation of The Tempest, it would be ‘colourful.’ And by that I do not merely mean that it throws about a fair bit of paint, but that it stages, with the most breathtaking honesty, the amalgamation of beauty and cruelty contained within an artist, mother, and oppressor.

The Tempest is above all a tale of oppression. Far from being the benign scholar or disturbed parent of older adaptations, Melania Hamilton’s Prospero is revengeful, power-drunk, terrifying. She seems ever-present, even when not physically on stage, thanks, in part, to Gwendolyn Seller’s impeccable lighting, but most of all to the rest of the cast’s outstanding performances as the pawns she manipulates in her great psychological spectacle.

“Far from being the benign scholar or disturbed parent of older adaptations, Melania Hamilton’s Prospero is revengeful, power-drunk, terrifying”

With control as a main concern, the concentration on Ariel (Olivia Khattar) and Caliban (Arabella Alhaddad) as oppressed servants is by no means a stylistic downfall. Indeed, their scenes with Prospero are some of the most haunting (I almost felt her stroking Ariel’s hair) just as their costumes, cleverly paint-ridden, lend a unique materiality to her power. Caliban, though eschewing the traditional moral greyness of the character which the script perhaps alludes to, instead presented a novel character whose humanity was palpable, leaving the audience undoubtedly compassionate. Likewise, Ariel, lofty, elegant, yet striking when need-be, had a magnetic stage presence all-too-suited to her supernatural character.

It takes a lot of skill to make Shakespearean verse sound natural, but the actors of the ETG pull it off admirably, with special credit due to the brilliant duo Macsen Llewelyn and Grace Leaman, who turn the notoriously difficult drunken comedy of Trinculo and Stefano into a delightful comic exchange that had the audience bursting with laughter. Miranda (Maya Moh) and Prospero’s relationship is cast in an especially interesting light (dominated more by fear, it seems, than by love), while the episodes of singing and dancing could not be more charming.

“The production’s intellectual success rested on its ability to ask all the right questions.”

However, the ‘artistic’ element of the play, while working well to convey Prospero’s prevalence over the others, perhaps appears to lack the justification needed to support its important innovation. That is, I was not so much left with the impression of Prospero as a tortured artist as that of a colonial oppressor, and the uncovering of the canvases could have perhaps been made more of, and earlier. Nonetheless, I admit I was awed by the scene in which Hamilton stretched her hand towards the centre painting, uttering the lines ‘I have bedimmed / The noontide sun’ – a truly dazzling apogee.

The production’s intellectual success rested on its ability to ask all the right questions. What does it take to survive? Can torture be merited? And – one of Montaigne’s more radical questions – who is civilised, and who is not? With little actual action happening on the stage, The Tempest is one of those plays that must appeal to subtextual cues for material, and the ETG knew this all-too-well when they transcended the political realm to ask, among other things, whether it is indeed crueller to create or destroy a man.

Without doubt, co-directors Manon Harvey and Keziah Prescod have created something of a small miracle: an intelligent and moving adaptation, The Tempest surpasses amateur trivialities and reaches into the realm of the truly spectacular. In fact, upon leaving the theatre, my viewing partner was amazed to hear that the ETG wasn’t professional…and what better commendation is there for a troupe, which, after all, has just successfully performed its own little bit of magic?

The Tempest is showing at the ADC Theatre until the 20th January.