Beginning is easy. Continuing is even easier. But the hardest trick of all is stopping and letting go. It’s not exaggerating to call a great ending an act of magic.
The Tempest is widely believed to be Shakespeare’s final solo work: his artistic ending. It’s a magical tale in which a powerful wizard orchestrates one last grand design, then breaks his staff and drowns his books, turning his back on his art forever.
Stratford’s new production of the play is the first of two that Antoni Cimolino is directing in this, the final of his 14 seasons as Stratford’s Artistic Director. He knows more than a little about grand designs, and facing his own moment to lay down his art, he is not going gently. His Tempest is a potent challenge to us: a farewell that amplifies the play’s tensions between visually dazzling artifice and hard-won emotional truth.
The play: a primer
Prospero (Geraint Wyn-Davies) is the deposed and exiled Duke of Milan. He has spent twelve years on a remote island with his daughter Miranda (Ashley Dingwell), who recollects no other human contact. Thanks to his magic, the island’s creatures serve him—most notably the airy spirit Ariel (Marissa Orjalo) and the bitter, bestial Caliban (Jonathan Goad). When fate delivers to nearby waters Antonio, the treacherous brother who exiled him (Gordon S. Miller), Prospero conjures a tempest, causing a shipwreck that sets into motion a plan of reckoning and resolution.
The Tempest is a challenging play to mount because of its extremities. It demands cinematic spectacle, but also intimate character work—which can be an uncomfortable mix. At the same time, the play features lengthy exposition and pacing and characterization complexities. And the hero Prospero’s dominion over the island creatures carries the full burden of colonialism and power.
To fashion the first part of his own Stratford ending, Cimolino tackles all of it—sometimes triumphantly, and sometimes at a cost.
The production: dazzling set pieces
The opening shipwreck shows Cimolino at the absolute height of his directorial powers. A storm-beset vessel commands the Festival Theatre’s thrust stage. A massive sail billows above, then collapses; and Ranil Sonnadara’s sound, Imogen Wilson’s lighting, and Adrienne Gould’s riveting movement simulate the ship’s side-to-side agony in the waves. A whirlpool swallows everything: our perspective shrinking to a point, then nothing.
It’s stunning and cinematic … and alas, the dialogue is almost inaudible. The Bard is hard, and when the storm drowns out the words, we’re disadvantaged from the start.
Post-storm, Set and Costume Designer Julie Fox’s island is centered by a truly massive, throne-like rock formation, which serves as Prospero’s director’s chair— from which he observes the island, and oversees and directs the action. It is surrounded by an alien beach landscape dotted by enormous shells and populated by mysterious marine bipeds. The massive vertical scale of this set (and the need for Wilson’s lighting to illuminate its top) creates a stark and almost eye-squintingly bright experience for the audience.
From his own off-stage director’s chair, Cimolino will blow in two later set pieces that dazzle almost as much as the storm. First, a magical banquet that manifests for the shipwrecked nobles becomes a terrifying rebuke drawn straight from a horror movie. It is truly bloodcurdling… though audio distortion once again obscures the meaning of the speech. Second, the betrothal pageant of the blessing of Ceres (Jenna-Lee Hyde), Iris (Michelle Giroux) and Juno (Allison Lynch) stops the action dead and stuns with its beauty. This procession of undersea creatures and song enchants like the best kind of Disney extravaganza, and earned a loud, enthusiastic ovation.
The actors: moving performances
When these splashy directorial marvels appear, they inevitably dwarf the daylight and drown the dialogue of the human narratives they interrupt. And speaking of these, the cast navigate the production’s complex terrain with aplomb. Orjalo’s bright-eyed, white-haired Ariel is heartbreakingly earnest: a naif in thrall, flitting with desperate energy as she seeks to please Prospero and evade his rebuke. Dingwell’s Miranda is delightfully unpolished: an earthy, earnest fish out of water, she could not be less like her world-weary father. Furry, tail-sporting and loud, Goad disappears inside a Caliban who is tortured, vengeful … and painfully easy to manipulate. And Ben Carlson’s Stephano and Josue Laboucane’s Trinculo, his manipulators, bring exaggeratedly raucous and boozy chaos to their scenes together, providing a release valve that yields complicated laughter laced with colonialist undertones.
The extensive supporting cast of David Collins, Jamie Mac, Landon Nesbitt, Fiona Reid, Emilio Vieira, Dakota Jamal Wellman, Michael Wamara, and Micah Woods round out the shipwrecked Court with solid, grounded work.
The true magic
Because the play is ultimately about Prospero, it is dominated by Geraint Wyn-Davies in a performance of two halves. Initially, he leans into being a short-tempered and hard-to-like tyrant, colonizer and helicopter parent. But when he steps back from his machinations and magics, we experience the real sorcery—in both his performance and Cimolino’s direction. For we believe in his buoyant choice of compassion over vengeance. We feel his deep love for Ariel, his accountability for Caliban, and his risky, transformative hope for a new future. He once again sits apart—but this time across from them, watching them keenly as they find their own paths.
These final moments—brightly illuminated and unadorned by artifice—work precisely because of all the distraction that precedes them. Cimolino can certainly orchestrate incredible set pieces from on high with the best of them. But the director’s truest mastery is sitting across from his cast and trusting them to carry the emotional weight of the difficult pivot on which this play depends.
Beginning is easy. Continuing is even easier. But Cimolino’s The Tempest—spectacle-filled, imperfect, and deeply felt—successfully delivers what may be the hardest magic of all: a great ending.
The Tempest runs at Stratford’s Festival Theatre through October 24, 2026. Tickets are available at stratfordfestival.ca.
© Scott Sneddon, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
