Exiled to an island somewhere in the New World, Prospero lives with his daughter, Miranda, attended by spirits and the monster Caliban. After twelve years, he prepares to take revenge on his enemies only to decide that the ‘rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance’. Shakespeare’s final play is a wonder of invention: a tempest, a shipwreck, castaways, lost children, music, first love, revenge, drunken clowns, murder plots, magic, monsters and spirits. The Bard’s farewell to the stage continues to raise the provocative question: can a bitter world be re-imagined? As timely now as it was 400 years ago!