Eight times a week, in a rowdy, devastating, gender-bending production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” at St. Ann’s Warehouse, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, the British actress Harriet Walter plays Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan. Dressed in sweatpants and a tank top, Prospero stalks through a diminished world—on an “isle full of noises”—peopled by his fifteen-year-old daughter, Miranda; Ariel, “an airy sprite”; and Caliban, whom the casting notes (which may have been written not by Shakespeare but by Ralph Crane, scrivener of the First Folio) describe as “a savage and deformed slave.” “The Tempest” is a fairy tale about isolation, disorder, and legerdemain giving way to a just and righted world. The production is set in a women’s prison.

 

Read more at www.newyorker.com