Enter Marinors wet.

I’d wanted to read this play since I’d understood it to be the template for the classic sci-fi film Forbidden Planet. And you know what, it is.

A king and his court are shipwrecked on an island where a magician (Prospero) lives with Miranda his daughter. They are served by spirits, chief among them Ariel who creates the illusion of the tempest to bring the court to Prospero’s island there to play out a plan to right past wrongs and secure Miranda’s future.

This apparently was Shakespeare’s last play and although it has the potential to be a weird rambling mess, it becomes a master in full flow, defiantly breaking convention with many possible readings and depths. There are no surprises, the outcomes are inevitable, the wit is sparce. Yet it works, perhaps because it leaves you with your own tempest of questions.