Review: Shobana Jeyasingh Dance in We Caliban, an ‘inventive, sideways look’ at The Tempest
Graham Watts sees Shobana Jeyasingh’s We Caliban – I would rather see fresh ideas than this continuing trope of reinventing Shakespeare.
| Title | We Caliban |
| Company | Shobana Jeyasingh Dance |
| Venue | Sadler’s Wells East, London |
| Date | 21 April 2026 |
| Reviewer | Graham Watts |
Shobana Jeyasingh is a choreographer and director with a long and glorious track record of telling fascinating stories by infusing movement with meaningful implications. She has a back catalogue of at least 60 works, now added to by this one-hour dance drama that seeks to bring a new(ish) interpretation of The Tempest
This self-declared ‘inventive, sideways look’ takes the attention away from courtly acts of power, betrayal and revenge, flavoured by Prospero’s magic, by focusing the lens on the enslaved character of Caliban, or more to the point a whole tribe of Calibans. In any straightforward account of The Tempest, Caliban (the phonetic similarity to cannibal being obvious) is a lonely, brutish savage, most often portrayed as a hybrid of monster and human, the son of the deceased witch, Sycorax.
But in Jeyasingh’s narrative, Caliban is a community, a culture, perhaps even a nation, and Prospero’s arrival on their island is not simply the consequence of a shipwreck, but a blunt representation of colonialism. The audience’s introduction to the work is in a prologue entitled “Group Caliban – pre-colonised times in an imagined land”, as Jeyasingh has endeavoured to show a happy, harmonious and enlightened society prior to Prospero and Miranda’s invasion.
Prospero’s magic is made possible by his books (an emphasis memorably recalled from Peter Greenaway’s filmed interpretation of The Tempest, entitled Prospero’s Books) but we see plainly in this prologue that Group Caliban is already cultured, carrying and passing on books as prized possessions. Shakespeare wrote that Miranda taught Caliban to speak in her language since, before that, he spoke in unintelligible grunts, but what if his seemingly crude language was a form of higher intelligence, unknown to the interlopers?
The best of We Caliban is very good. Jeyasingh’s choreography reaches heights of expressive clarity, especially in that joyous opening, pre-colonial scene and in two outstanding duets: first, between Holly Vallis’ Miranda and Raúl Reinoso Acanda, perhaps best identified as I Caliban, where the former appears to be exploring Caliban’s body as an invader might investigate their conquered territory; and then, in the final scene, after the departure of Miranda and Prospero, Acanda dances another duet with Tanisha Addicott that seems to suggest a recalibration of the We Caliban communal identity after the colonial intervention.
Another plus is the way in which Jeyasingh delineates the courtly sophistication of the Milanese through more balletic movement, against the much more diverse and largely contemporary movement palette of the Caliban island commune. In The Tempest, Caliban is enslaved by Prospero and accused of attempting to rape Miranda, but neither situation is obviously represented in We Caliban, although both would have played to the theme of colonialism.
The eight-strong ensemble, clad in strong and colourful costume designs (by Mayou Trikerioti) were uniformly excellent both dancing in groups and highlighting aspects of the story in solos. From the Court of Milan, Harry Ondrak-Wright performed as Prospero; Oliver Mahar was the scheming usurper, Antonio, and George Gregory was Prince Ferdinand, who captures Miranda’s heart and avenges the ignominy done to her father.
On the negative side, the use of floaty back projections to explain the links to Shakespeare, The Tempest, and the islands of the Caribbean seemed an overkill that detracted from the movement onstage, and I was not much enamoured of the score, which left no indelible memory. The ambiguity of the danced representation of the play, albeit as a ‘sideways’ look, was also often confusing and only became a tad clearer when reading the full programme (which, annoyingly, was only available by accessing a QR code – not the easiest thing to do when in the venue).
I was left totting up the number of reinventions of The Tempest that I have seen in dance, which is quite a few, and thinking that placing modern interpretations on plays that have been around for over half a Millennium should have had its day, long ago. I would much rather see fresh ideas and contemporary concepts than this continuing trope of reinventing Shakespeare.
Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA). He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.
He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv. He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.
