Stratford Festival review: Cimolino’s The Tempest a strange, magical start to the season

From left, Katarina Fiallos as Spirit, Geraint Wyn Davies as Prospero and Allison Lynch as Spirit in The Tempest. Stratford Festival 2026.

The Stratford Festival and outgoing artistic director Antoni Cimolino’s season-opening production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest proved once again that good theatre is “such stuff as dreams are made on.”

Just as Prospero, played in this production by the venerable Geraint Wyn Davies, comments on the fleeting, dream-like nature of human existence and how our lives and achievements ultimately fade into nothingness, the magical island created by this production’s design team and all its terrifying and beautiful inhabitants have begun to fade from my memory, almost like the whole thing was a bizarrely fantastical dream.

But what a dream it was!

Frighteningly dramatic storms and a ship’s sail that transform into the sea itself give way to horrifying island sea creatures – anamorphic mutations of seashells, mollusks, coral and seabirds – and a spritely spirit, Ariel (Marissa Orjalo), who fulfills her debt of servitude to Davies’ magical protagonist by mischievously punishing those shipwrecked usurpers who stole his former life and thought him dead.

Elsewhere on the island, Caliban (Jonathan Goad) – a grotesque rat-man hybrid enslaved by Prospero – forms an unlikely alliance with two shipwrecked royal servants, chef Trinculo (Josue Laboucane) and butler Stephano (Ben Carlson), and plot to kill Prospero and take the island as their kingdom.

Unlike some of Shakespeare’s other notable protagonists, Prospero and Ariel are always two steps ahead of any planned treachery, including that of Prospero’s brother, Antonio (Gordon S. Miller), and the brother of Neapolitan King Alonso (David Collins), Sebastian (Micah Woods), as they plot to kill the king and take his title.

Instead, treachery is turned to comedy as Prospero and Ariel’s magical hijinks undermine those antagonistic efforts at every turn. A particular highlight of this production for me is the considerable slapstick-comedy chops of Goad, Laboucane and Carlson as their characters, drunk from mysterious island wine, try and fail to kill Prospero in his cavern while he sleeps.

Davies’ performance as Prospero, who is introduced with vengeance in his heart but ultimately finds forgiveness for those who wronged him by way of the love between his daughter, Miranda (Ashley Dingwell), and Ferdinand (Dakota Jamal Wellman), King Alonso’s son, grounds the story in a rewarding and believable emotional journey. Though Prospero is a character without limits to his power, Davies’ performance makes that journey and Prospero’s decision to relinquish his power feel earned.

Start to finish, this production of The Tempest is a masterclass in bringing to life that ethereal quality that places this among my favourite of Shakespeare’s works.

From gigantic-yet-graceful puppets, dramatic lighting and an epic soundscape punctuated by Shakespearean songs put to new and exciting music, to fantastical costumes and the other-worldly performances of the actors who inhabited them, Cimolino and his artistic team have made sure the artistic director’s final Shakespearean production on the Festival Theatre stage is one to remember.

The Tempest plays at the Festival Theatre until Oct. 24.