Sir Trevor Nunn has clearly decided that he might as well throw everything at it to combat the wordiness. I do mean everything. His production is chock-full of camp flounces and flourishes with the son et lumière techniques of the commercial West End stage tacked on. Ariel (Tom Byam Shaw) looks like a fey, bleach-blond Billy Idol with a homo-erotic crush on his master. The female spirits with pointy hair and conical bras bear an unhappy resemblance to creatures from 1970s sci-fi movies, while the various knaves and tricksters goof around in doublet and hose.

It is as if several different productions had mated and produced a very mongrel offspring. Hardly anyone can sing well, which is a bit of a shortcoming in a play in which music features strongly and is belted out at a volume little short of the great deafener, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Fortunately, Ralph Fiennes as a brow-furrowed, brooding Prospero compensates. His relationship with Caliban is shot through with guilt, tenderness and remorse. In the role of the poor fettered creature, Giles Terera contorts and writhes his frustrations with raw physicality. That, however, makes us wonder why he then submits so readily to Prospero again in a rather sugary ending in which more than a few liberties are taken with the text to ensure that all's well that ends well. Really The Tempest is a much more ambiguous play than that and the sugary glaze can't conceal that the overall concept is muddy.

For laughs, we have Nicholas Lyndhurst, one of the few TV comedy stars who can translate his hang-dog gormlessness ably to the stage. He gets a Ronnie Wood haircut, for reasons best known to Sir Trevor, but paints a fine picture of clumsy self-d

elusion as Trinculo, wearing Prospero's golden clothes like a schoolboy oaf who has stolen the neighbour's washing. 

There are far too many flaws and inconsistencies to make this a Tempest to remember, but due credit to Fiennes, who saves the day. Without him, it wouldn't be much more than a squall.