Two years in the making, RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran’s new staging of Shakespeare’s final sole-authored play comes to Australian cinemas trailing two theatrical coups. First, it has enough technical wizardry to sink a battleship – let alone the hapless vessel of Alonso, King of Naples. Then there is the return of Simon Russell Beale after 20 years’ absence from the Stratford stage. Impressive and engaging as the first of those most certainly is, it’s the latter’s deeply personal and intensely moving assumption of the usurped Duke of Milan that makes this production a must see.

^{The Masque. Photos Topher McGrillis and Intel}

The Tempest, like so many of Shakespeare’s final works, is a play about forgiveness, about man’s humanity to man and our ability to let go. Doran and Beale place their emphasis on Prospero’s surprisingly difficult relationship with his daughter, here a feisty teenager. This Prospero is no kindly father, gently guiding his wide-eyed daughter – a slightly tremulous-voiced Jenny Rainsford – towards womanhood. At times they go at it hammer and tongs, and Beale’s struggle to give her up to Ferdinand becomes increasingly palpable.

Interrupting his concocted Masque with...