The Tempest is a strange and elusive play; which critics have interpreted in very different ways: as a drama of forgiveness and reconciliation, as an exploration of the limits of theatrical art, or as a play complicit with colonial exploitation. Prospero's island is a fearful yet enchanting place; a place suffused with music, and its storm, disappearing banquet and elaborate betrothal masque demand imaginative stagecraft. Stratford productions have steered their way through the play's complex, even contradictory potential, in fascinatingly varied fashion, and Daivd Lindley explores that variety both as evidence of the evolution of theatrical styles, and as a response to the changing critical fortunes of the play.