I was moving house, so I was about three minutes late for the start of The Tempest. Normally, this wouldn't annoy me, because the play starts with a shipwreck which is one of the most difficult, and generally one of the most unconvincing scenes to appear on stage: lots of people staggering around on a flat surface, pretending to be tossed around by a storm. They end up looking like drunks who have just got off a rollercoaster.

However, as I ran towards the stage I could hear people laughing, and clapping. What had happened? Had one of the unconvincing seamen got his sou'wester caught on the mizzen? How droll.

Actually, what they were applauding, and what I was a muppet to have missed, was the start of a well-thought-out, funny and entirely professional (given the normal standard of the plays I end up embarrassedly watching, this is the highest possible praise) production of this play.

I don't need to tell you what happens: if I do, then you should jolly well go and pay the full ticket price to find out, you Bard-bare bonehead. But basically, there are shipwrecks, drunken monsters, magic spells, disappearing feasts, mistaken identities, lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. Standard Shakespeare stuff: a lot of the audience was made of GCSE English students still under the impression (from what I heard during the interval) that one of the best ways to flirt with girls is to pretend to have read a lot, which it so clearly isn't.

What makes this production better than the norm, and a lot more memorable, are two things. First, the acting is excellent. Raewyn Lippert (a stage name, perchance?) manages to make Miranda move convincingly from sounding like a silly girl who won't be getting a pony this Christmas to a far more grown-up and interesting character, once she has met Ferdinand (Tom Mallaburn, five stars). Prospero (Robert Lister) is avuncular and almost sympathetic, which is more positive than I have been able to feel about the manipulative monster before now. The sub-plot Lords are genial and make the most of doubling-up their parts, especially Andrew Pepper (Sebastian / Trinculo).

But what really gives everything a boost is the magic. I mean constant sleight-of-hand Magic-Circle-type magic, which all the characters are affected by, but which the superb Seamus Allen, as a leprechaun-like Ariel, manages to orchestrate and participate in extremely convincingly. He even levitates. To the man-sized arse in the seat in front of me, who spent the whole play saying to his neighbour 'Of course, you can see how he does it', my answer is that at least one person couldn't see anything of the sort.

Really, this is an almost perfect summer play, for everyone. Go and see it now, because the tickets all say that there will be no refunds in the event of inclement weather, and clement weather cannot be guaranteed for long, except by conjuring.

James Womack, 08.07.03