We are taught that forgiveness is the sign of a great man. Stemming from the New Testament’s turn-the-other-cheek policy, this is a notion which has seeped down through our society encouraging us to live in unity and peace rather than in quarrel. However this is sometimes easier said than done, and as the blood boils vengeance can seem the more favourable action. Left on an almost empty island for twelve years, with his demons screaming ‘revenge’, this is where we meet the sorcerer Prospero (Paul Higgins) at the up of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Considered Shakespeare’s final play and dubbed a ‘romance’, director Paddy Cunneen tinkers with the formula to derive further meaning from his characters and their parallels. Prospero has summoned the spirit Ariel (David McKay) to bring crashing to shore the ship of his brother, Antonio (Matthew Pidgeon), and the King Alonso (Malcolm Shields), who are responsible for him and his daughter Miranda’s (Helen McAlpine) situation. All parties from the crashing ship are separated throughout the eerie island and act in Prospero’s revenge. On the island Miranda and Prospero have only had companion of the savage Caliban (Paul Blair), who Miranda thinks vile, but when the king’s son Ferdinand appears (also Paul Blair) she immediately falls for him. Likewise the king’s brother Sebastian (Paul Thomas Hickey) and Antonio are also cast in the parts of the lowly drunkard servants Trinculo and Stefano. Cunneen comments ever man has in him the capacity to be savage or proper; it is only situation and title which decides.
                                                                                                                             
Drawing many modern parallels, not least in cult TV series Lost which also sees a group abandoned on a weird island for no known reason, this play has stayed fresh through its amalgamation of genres: the fantastic, family, vengeance, treason, betrayal and romance. The reason this production clicks is the company’s full understanding of the text and its attempt to make relevant the themes, rather than relying on the name ‘Shakespeare’ to sell their show. Vengeance versus forgiveness carries the plot, and in the end we can see that neither will benefit Prospero, but what he wills shall affect everyone else. To forgive also sets him free of the past, so he can enjoy his daughter’s happiness.

The hierarchy is emphasised through Blair, Pidgeon and Hickey’s shifts between high and low classes of characters, but in the end they are all free willed to drink and rebel. Ariel is the real slave, and just as Prospero is bound to the island, Ariel is bound to him. Prospero’s real empathy would come from setting free Ariel, but he seems almost blind to these pleas, as though he’s a lesser creature. Even on this ‘free’ island, its inhabitants dictate a hierarchy, as though living without one would be ridiculous, and Prospero still takes his Dukedom back, even though he should have learnt it’s meaningless.

These character switches were depicted astutely by a capable cast, and the reimagining of Trinculo and Stefano as a couple of jakey Weegies contemporises the comic relief, which can often be thought of as irratating. Designer Jonathan Fensom depicts Prospero’s ‘cell’ as a metal transport box, spewing forth his worldly goods, including a broken piano. It’s a mixing again of the wild and the proper, and the capitalist belief that a man is defined by his wealth and quality of goods. Judith Greenwood’s lighting creates the atmospheres of the real and surreal accompanied by a smoke machine and eerie, enchanting piano music. Cunneen has captured the essence of this play, transporting us into the tempest, but will we return the same?

Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 28 Oct