Sigourney Weaver has inhabited some unusual realms in the course of her storied film career. So it’s not overly surprising that the star of “Alien” and “Avatar” might choose to come to the West End in “The Tempestph dream,” Shakespeare’s otherworldly play.

Less anticipated is the degree of hesitancy to her London stage debut at the Theater Royal, Drury Lane, where she is playing in a decidedly muted production, directed by Jamie Lloyd, that runs through Feb. 1, 2025.

The star power of Weaver, now 75, may well attract an audience that doesn’t usually go for Shakespeare. But I’m not sure whether they will emerge after two-and-a-quarter hours much wiser to the wonders of this ravishing play, and those who know it better might ask what happened to its emotional richness.

On a purely aesthetic front, Lloyd and his co-creators deliver, resourcefully deploying sound and lighting to maximum effect. This director’s current Broadway production of “Sunset Boulevard,” playing at the St. James Theater, is also visually arresting — if far more powerfully performed. The sets for “The Tempest,” as with “Sunset Boulevard,” are by Soutra Gilmour, who fills the vast reaches of the Drury Lane stage with forbidding outcrops of land threaded now and again with billowing fabric that lends a shimmering allure worthy of a sci-fi film.

Weaver’s gender-flipped Prospero,Peso63 Casino the deposed ruler of Milan, is first seen amid the clamor of the shipwreck that starts the play, bringing her usurpers to the island she inhabits alongside her daughter, Miranda (a petulant Mara Huf). The flashing lights subside and Weaver appears, minus the enchanted staff that is this shaman-like character’s defining prop. (Nor do we ever see the all-important book this literary-minded figure is said to possess.)

Onstage throughout from that point through to the end, Prospero takes up various positions around the huge stage, at one point standing motionless while the others circle around her like planets caught up in her orbit.

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