The Tempest review: Real-time digital avatar brews storm in a teacup

On paper, the idea of bringing William Shakespeare's The Tempest into the 21st century by using live-action performance capture technology to thrill theatregoers in the bard's backyard is an exciting and daring move. In reality, Intel's collaboration with Imaginarium Studios and the Royal Shakespeare Company is a little underwhelming.

Ariel—the sprite at the centre of The Tempest, played here with poise and determination by Mark Quartley—is the obvious choice to render as a digital character on the stage. Quartley, zipped up in a skintight, superhero-like jumpsuit, is described by the team behind the production as the puppeteer. Depending on how the ship wreck-strewn stage is lit, flesh-toned sensors can be seen through his motion-capture costume, showing the audience the very modern-day puppeteer's strings. The person driving the tech—arguably the puppeteer's puppeteer—is completely hidden from view, however, as they wrestle with a computer that is appropriately dubbed Big Beast.

Guided by 27 projectors, Ariel is occasionally elevated from physical form into the digital realm as an avatar floating uncertainly above the actors. All the while, Quartley remains on stage, putting in a strong turn that is frankly more fascinating to watch than the projection of his movements, which are rendered in real-time onto tubes and sheets of black fabric. The performance capture technology used here to keep up with the live action jars slightly, as the spectacle and physicality of theatre is temporarily stilted by what felt to me like an unforgiving, cinematic interruption.

The RSC's director of design, Stephen Brimson Lewis—during a press briefing before the show—was at pains to say that "the truth about the technology is that I was very determined to hide it." He hoped to prevent this version of The Tempest from looking like a digital production. Which explains why Quartley appears on stage alongside his real-time avatar. Sadly, though, having the two Ariels in concert with one another hints at a lack of faith in convincing the audience that the tech is capturing performance as it happens.

I can see why any creator wants to show their workings as they form, but in doing that, the avatar feels very much like a sideshow event to the main action on stage.

There are some neat tech standout moments during the two-and-a-half hour production of The Tempest—which appears as part of the 400-year anniversary marking the death of Shakespeare. Snarling dogs suddenly materialise on the skins of beating drums, which are held shield-like as the actors dart across the stage towards the audience—almost reminding me of a typical direction used in 3D films. The dogs are beamed onto the drums at pace. And, because this is a live performance, the animals don't track perfectly across the skins. Nonetheless, the effect is quite startling and imaginative.

But the digital avatar—while ambitious—all too often reminds me of someone getting out their phone at a gig to capture the moment, thereby obscuring the physical performance on the stage for everyone around them. We don't go to the theatre to view the world through a lens—it's the blood, sweat, and tears of actors that we want to be up close to during a play as visually rich, rhythmic, and raucous as The Tempest.

Nonetheless, Intel, Imaginarium Studios, and the RSC deserve credit for such a bold vision of how theatre could look in this modern world. Ben Lumsden, who is the head of studio at Imaginarium, says that "it's risky, it's not been done before." And the technical challenge behind bringing this show to life was immense. The avatar—which was more than a year in the making—was created with 336 joints to match the human body, takes over 200,000 "discrete files" to run it in real-time, and is animated, we're told, by a PC that is loaded with 50 million times more memory than the one that humankind put on the moon.

I hoped to be drowning in the digital storm conjured up by Ariel in this performance of The Tempest. Instead, I was looking for shelter every time the avatar appeared. No sea change here.

Listing image by Intel Corporation